November
by SydnieWren
Summary: In the midst of a strange, cold November, Kakashi becomes consumed with uncovering aspects of Iruka's past. Noncon, dubcon, violence. Kaka/Iru. Extremely dark.
1. November

**Hey all! I know I have some Bleach stuff still in the works, and it's coming along! But, since I've had this idea on my mind, it's been hard to shake, so I figured I'd write it down. Plus, it's Thanksgiving here in the States, so I wanted to give you all something to read and let you know how thankful I am for your readership. Your encouragement has done so much for me over the years, and I genuinely appreciate it.**

**This fic is a little like a dark re-imagining of the premise of Flow: a Kaka-Iru get-together story with some rough turns. Some people had let me know that they felt the Iruka of Flow was a bit too submissive and passive, and I do pay attention to your criticism, so that is a little bit different here. I hope it's an enjoyable read!**

**Warnings: anal, dubcon, noncon.**

**Disclaimer: don't own.**

**Thanks for reading; please review! Also, for my US readers: happy Thanksgiving!**

* * *

It began when Kakashi was caught up in the doldrums of his early twenties, a period in which he possessed neither the ebullience of childhood nor the sound judgment of adulthood. The resulting listless, aimless boredom gave rise to the development of some of his finest techniques as well as the execution of some of his poorest decisions.

Now, turning an earthenware cup of steaming tea as snow settles on the bare branches of trees outside, he remembers the sum of his harm and healing with some measure of regret.

He often submits this way to memory when it snows, always in silence, always over bitter tea.

* * *

"One more, that's it. I'm totally broke," Iruka laughed, and snapped the cap off the bottle with the flat edge of a kunai. Genma nodded resolutely and did the same.

"I'll drink to that," he grinned, smacking their bottles together before downing half of his.

"To being broke," Iruka agreed, and tipped his head back to drink.

The pleasant buzz of conversation carried on around them, and perhaps there was also music, though it was drowned out by the hum of voices. In bars catering to shinobi, missions were rarely discussed, and conversations were always punctuated strangely by topics better left outside. They spoke around the names of the dead and the failures of the past. They talked instead of gossip and city goings-on, personal projects and plans for the future.

Iruka was relatively dry in all preferred categories. Having recently withdrawn from missions and taken up his position at the academy, his news was primarily of the pre-genin sort, uninteresting to him and the men who had formerly been his colleagues. He leaned against the bar and felt his bottle lighten in his hand as Genma gazed blankly about.

"Fuckin' cold out," Genma muttered, "too cold for November."

"Right," Iruka sighed, "seems like it's going to be a long winter."

"Got that right."

A gust of icy air punctuated Genma's thought, and conversation dropped a pitch for a moment as a new patron entered the bar. Iruka squinted against the breath of cold before recognizing Kakashi, still in his ANBU gear, his mask slung around his hip.

"Oi, Shiranui," he greeted, nodding at the man, "oi, Umino."

"Ah, shit Kakashi, just tonight, you can call me Genma," the jounin smiled crookedly, "if you buy me a drink, anyway."

"Why not?" Kakashi shrugged, "better make it worth my while."

Kakashi ordered a round and Iruka found a fourth beer awaiting him sooner than he had expected. Genma caught his old friend in conversation that seemed to exclude Iruka at every turn, which he found just as well. These days he had less to say to Kakashi than he ever, which had admittedly always been very little. The gulf between their natural ability grew progressively broader over the years, and Iruka could almost sense its tangible presence as he stood inches from Kakashi, long-time acquaintances though they were.

Still he felt guilty for drinking on the other man's dime without saying so much as a word to him. When Genma disappeared momentarily to relieve himself, Iruka cleared his throat and glanced at Kakashi's profile, sharply outlined by the dark mask.

"How'd it go?" he asked absently, having nothing better to offer up in terms of conversation.

"Fine," Kakashi replied blankly. Iruka calmed his nerves with another deep swig of beer and glanced the man's armor over. It appeared spotless save for a little dirt.

"Just fine?"

"You want my mission report?" Kakashi turned and regarded him with the full, singular force of that dark eye. Iruka immediately brought his gaze to the floor.

"Not – not now, I mean, you know. Later."

"Yeah?" Kakashi's pitch changed enough to garner the other man's drifting attention, or else he may never have heard the addition that followed, soft and low as it was: "later tonight?"

"Ah, okay," was the best he could manage. Genma returned and resumed the story he had been relating to Kakashi when he departed, leaving Iruka with the spinning uncertainty of what had just transpired between himself and the jounin.

He settled the empty bottle down on the bar and closed his tab, sheepishly omitting the round Kakashi had picked up.

"Heading out?" Genma was already halfway through another beer. Iruka nodded and knotted his scarf around his neck.

"I'm manning mission control tomorrow, so. See you around?"

"Later," Genma gave him a nod of farewell, and Kakashi glanced over his shoulder at him.

"Later," he added, and the word tightened something in Iruka's chest that he could not give words to.

* * *

Iruka's apartment was dark from street level, but Kakashi gave no thought to whether or not their agreement had been what he presumed. He had known by the stiffness of the other man's posture as he made his exit that he had been understood. In another set of circumstances, he knew he would have given more thought to this, but he had been abroad on missions for what felt like weeks, and had grown tired of the bruisingly rough anonymous encounters between him and other shinobi.

He scaled the tree closest to Iruka's window, and then carefully crept along an outstretched branch until he could slip a kunai under the sash and twist the lock open. The window slid upward with ease, and he angled his shoulders to slide into the apartment.

Kakashi's full height cast a long shadow over the bed where Iruka lay. The chuunin had heard, of course, and presently he sat up clutching the kunai normally stowed under his pillow, but his grip loosened when Kakashi began to shed his armor.

"Shut the window," Iruka muttered. Kakashi reached behind himself wordlessly and did so. The silence that followed was interrupted only by the piling of his pale colored armor near the foot of the bed.

"Here?" he asked, having stripped to only his dark pants. Iruka shrugged and leaned against the headboard.

"Where else?"

"Just asking."

This sort of thing was hardly unheard of among shinobi. It was understood that, especially among the elite, families were an unwise option; the lovers who offered release without expecting regular phone calls were seen as providing an important social function, however unspoken. Some of those girls even went on, at the conclusion of their paramours' illustrious careers, to become wives. Iruka hadn't any idea what became of the men.

"Do you have anything?" Kakashi was stroking himself through his pants. Iruka nodded dumbly and leaned over to open the nightstand drawer. As he rifled through its contents for his lubricant, Kakashi tugged the blankets off the bed in a single smooth motion.

He knelt on the edge of the bed and leaned forward to hook his thumbs under the waistband of Iruka's pants, jerking them downward; Iruka arched his hips clumsily and felt a flush spread over his chest and neck as the cool air met his skin.

"Spread your legs," Kakashi's voice must have dropped an octave. Iruka swallowed thickly and reclined into his pillows, trying to summon back the sensation of pleasant drunkenness that seemed to be rapidly fading.

He spread his thighs as he had been instructed, and Kakashi moved between them, supporting himself with a hand planted near Iruka's neck. He reached up for the lubricant and set it aside, within close reach. Very little of it had been used; he suspected that what was gone had been spent in solitude.

Kakashi's fingertips traced along the scar running from the crest of one cheekbone to the other, and Iruka flinched, drew away. The skin there felt tender and raw, smoother than the flesh surrounding it, as though it had never fully healed. A slight dent in the bridge of Iruka's nose spoke of a fracture never correctly set.

"Stop it," he murmured, without much conviction. Kakashi seemed not to hear. Iruka brought his hand up to swat the other man's away.

That was a mistake. Kakashi caught his wrist in a sudden, bruising grip and pinned it above him, twisting slightly. Despite himself Iruka cried out sharply, having forgotten, momentarily, how fatally quick shinobi reflexes could be.

"Don't," Kakashi warned. He dropped his hand between them to open his fly; Iruka did not look down as the cap was removed from the tube of lubricant.

Kakashi's middle finger, slick and searching, pressed inside of Iruka, followed by his index. The chuunin gave only modest signals of discomfort, his breath halting and eyes tightly shut. Nonetheless he groaned when Kakashi began stroking that sensitive gland buried inside of him.

After long moments of deeper and deeper probing, knuckles spread far apart, Kakashi withdrew his fingers and replaced them with the tip of his cock, also thickly coated with slick fluid.

A choked groan signaled Iruka's body yielding to the intrusion. For a brief moment, Iruka's glance flickered upward, and he caught sight of the brilliant redness of the Sharingan eye, its iris reflective and bright in the semidarkness. Even with his cock buried inside a near stranger, half-drunk and exhausted, Kakashi looked lethal. Iruka shuddered and let his eyes drift shut as sweat began to form at his temples. Kakashi's pace was as brutal and brisk as his courtship, and neither left much time for thought.

Still, the jounin was, above all else, a man of profoundly developed technique in all arenas of life. Each stroke was deep, forceful, and perfectly placed; Iruka's thighs jerked open on bare instinct, and he arched up against Kakashi without hesitation.

Iruka encircled his cock with his hand, stroking in time with Kakashi's thrusts.

There were murmurs, whispers in his ear, short and husky suggestions of things to come, and they sent searing heat rushing through him. His fingers tangled in the pillowcase and captured errant strands of hair; teeth ground together, he came, seed spilling out over his taut stomach.

Kakashi finished too, but by that time Iruka was mostly unaware.

* * *

For once, Genma was not hung over. He leaned against the railing of the lowest level of stadium seating as the ring was set up for the chuunin exams to occur later that day.

"Makes sense to hold these at different times of year," he observed, "but fuck me if it isn't freezing out here."

Kakashi buried his hands in his pockets and nodded stiffly.

"Are there shifts, or are we judging this whole thing?"

"Shifts every two hours," Genma answered, "Raidou will be in to relieve us at four."

"Alone?"

"Guess so."

"Asuma?"

"On a mission."

"Umino?"

"Busy."

"Same mission?"

"Umino doesn't take missions anymore."

It was the simplest, most sensible answer any informed person could possibly have given, but it disrupted the easy flow of Kakashi's banter. He turned the thought over in his mind.

"Oh yeah? Why?" he finally offered, though the question piqued his curiosity and tested the limits of his utter nonchalance. Genma merely shrugged.

"Not really sure," he said with a noncommittal gesture of his hands, "guess he just does other things now. Mission control, and all that."

Implicit in his unreserved acceptance of the situation was Genma's appraisal that Iruka had never been a particularly talented shinobi, and that nothing was much lost by his early retirement. It was, Kakashi knew, a rather broadly shared opinion.

* * *

It was the right day for the richly salted, thickly spiced ramen Kakashi preferred. He stood under the cloth awning as it fluttered in the icy wind and related his order to the rosy-cheeked clerk.

"Will that be all?"

"That's it," he drew up closer to escape the onslaught of the cold.

The clerk disappeared into the back of the stall and reemerged in short order with a neatly packed parcel of food. Kakashi paid and accepted the bundle, finding its searing heat pleasant against his skin.

For some time it had been bitterly cold, with no suggestion of either sunshine or snow. The sky was broad and slate grey, and the last leaves of autumn, now colorless and dry, littered the gutters. Kakashi tugged his mask higher on his cheekbones to save his skin from chapping.

Still, every inch of exposed flesh felt raw for long moments after he stepped through his door into the dark hall of his apartment. It hadn't seen much use: his lease began only a few months prior, when he had the income for it, and he had not slept here more than a week of nights consecutively since then.

He was still lacking some very basic home amenities: there was next to nothing in the cupboards, and he had yet to invest in pots or pans. He settled in on the sofa near his bookshelf and tugged down a couple of volumes for light dinnertime reading.

In any given volume, Kakashi knew the plot by heart. _Icha Icha _wasn't among the most literarily valuable works of all time, and this he knew: he didn't read it for edification, after all.

"_How can you ask me a thing like that?" she cried, "you don't know any of the secrets of my heart!" _

Kakashi absentmindedly skipped a few lines as he gathered a tangle of noodles with the tips of his chopsticks.

"_What secrets? I know that if I touch you like this…"_

Kakashi continued to read along though his mind wandered back to the hours and days behind him. He was a practical man, and rarely gave into the temptation to rehash his decisions, but what had transpired between himself and Iruka was uncharacteristic – for the chuunin more so than for himself.

Or, he had thought that it was uncharacteristic. He had also thought that Iruka, like most other shinobi with decent skills and industrious dispositions, still took missions from time to time.

As he slurped down a healthy swig of broth, Kakashi began to realize that he could count on one hand the things he knew to be true about Iruka: his parents were deceased; he was a chuunin; he was generally well-liked for his mild personality, though his skill as a shinobi was thought little of.

Kakashi folded the corner of an oft-turned page and inserted the volume back into its place on the shelf. He had eaten much faster than he had expected to: it occurred to him that he hadn't really had a meal since his return the night previous, though his binge at the bar had done little for his appetite.

Wind shrieked against the windowpanes, and Kakashi was lightly surprised to find that there was no precipitation, only driving gales. The night was black and the streets appeared empty, but then again, so was the apartment. Kakashi regarded the bare walls and freshly unpacked furniture in its bleak stillness, and shrugged his flak jacket over his shoulders.

The events of the previous night notwithstanding, it was unacceptable to be more than a day late with a mission report.

* * *

Unsurprisingly, there was no line in the mission control room, only a lone shinobi on his way out. Kakashi nodded to him briefly and shouldered through the door, accompanied by a breath of frozen air.

"Damn cold out there, eh?" he slid the completed report across the desk with one hand. Iruka immediately began scanning it for accuracy.

"It's cold," he agreed absently. Kakashi could not discern whether his remoteness was intentional or not. He slid both hands into his pockets and waited for nothing in particular.

"You need to date and initial this," Iruka said matter-of-factly. He turned the report to face Kakashi, and pushed a pen across the surface of the desk.

"Where?"

"Each section."

"Ah, so I do," Kakashi took up the pen and began adding dates and initials.

Once finished, Kakashi leaned over the desk with both palms flat on its surface. Iruka busied himself with organizing Kakashi's report with its directive dossier.

"So, I have a question," the jounin began.

"Does it have to do with mission reports?" Iruka stood and turned his back to the man, carrying the report to a tall, nondescript filing cabinet.

"Not exactly," Kakashi admitted.

"Then it'll have to wait. I've got half an hour before my shift ends, and I need to file."

Kakashi shrugged and stood upright, rolling his shoulders.

"Anything planned for later?" he probed.

"Just going home," said Iruka, without turning around.

* * *

Kakashi eased out of Iruka with a shaky, sated sigh. A couple of moments passed before he sat up languidly and reached over the edge of the bed to find his flak jacket.

"Do you smoke?" he glanced over his shoulder at Iruka, who had turned away.

Iruka swung his legs over the edge of the bed and searched the nightstand for a hair elastic.

"Not anymore."

Kakashi shook a cigarette from the pack in the pocket of his flak jacket anyhow.

"You don't go on missions anymore, either," he pointed out simply. Iruka paused for a moment, then continued pulling his hair up.

"Nope."

Kakashi watched his naked back.

"Why's that?"

"The academy money is good," Iruka shrugged, and then stood, not without effort.

"It's not what I make," Kakashi countered. He heard the other man scoff.

"Yeah, well. I didn't make what you make when I was going on missions, so."

"That's true, but – and I hate to press this –"

"Then don't," Iruka cut in, to no avail.

"—but plenty of people do missions and teach. So mathematically speaking –"

"I wasn't good at it. Don't you have somewhere to be? A mission, maybe?"

Iruka disappeared into the bathroom and shut the door behind him pointedly. A thin sliver of light appeared underneath the door, but Kakashi concluded shortly that the other man would not emerge until his guest had departed, and so he did.

* * *

Chuunin exams continued the next morning; this time, Kakashi slated to proctor with Raidou. The man greeted him with an open-palmed wave as he descended the stairs into the arena.

"Oi, Kakashi, hope you don't mind if I cut out a little early," he greeted sheepishly, taking his place beside the other.

"Not at all. What's the occasion?"

Raidou glanced upward at the broad expanse of dark colored clouds.

"There's supposed to be a snowstorm, so mission control is closing up early today. I figure I'll get my report in just under the wire."

"Good call," Kakashi agreed genially, "when did you say it's closing?"

"Right at six, I think," Raidou replied, rubbing his hands together for the friction.

"Aa," Kakashi nodded and waved the first pair of combatants into the arena.

The two of them nervously entered, hands locked together. Bundled against the cold as they were, Kakashi could not tell their sexes, and had not thought to recall their names.

They parted with clear reluctance, and took up their positions on opposite sides of the arena to imitate the motions of killing each other.

* * *

**Thanks for the read, folks! Part two will be up very shortly. Please let me know what you think! **


	2. Black Pines

**Hey folks! Here's part two of three. I'm so happy that people have been reading this - it's been great to write. Thanks to Devilbiter and Moo-Choochan for a couple of great reviews! And Moo-Choochan - don't worry, this isn't a deathfic! Devilbiter: I'm with you on the way-far-out fics out there. I hope this one stays in the bounds of reasonable, albeit dark! **

**Warnings: oral, prostitution.**

**Disclaimer: don't own.**

* * *

The last four bouts of the chuunin exams were cancelled when the snow began to fall, though it was not particularly dense at first. Kakashi couldn't quite see the sense in it; by his estimation, fighting in snow was sometimes necessary, and it was as sensible to see how each opponent could contend under equally inclement conditions. Nevertheless, he did not voice his dissent when the announcement was made; after all, he had other projects set aside for the night.

On typical weekdays, the mission control room was open twenty-four hours, employing shinobi on rotating four or six hour shifts. Their work was mostly to ensure that the reports were properly filled out and filed correctly, though there was some expectation that they would ensure the integrity and security of the documents as well. Kakashi doubted that any serious effort had ever been made to illicitly obtain mission reports, of all things; their storage under lock-and-key seemed to him like more of the light bureaucratic paranoia that permeated administrations at large.

Still he had to contend with it. He slipped a senbon and kunai into his jacket before heading out into the snow.

Snow drove down in gales and gusts, glittering in the frost-coated lanterns and street lights and coating the streets in soft, dense whiteness. Already, the cloth awnings of street stalls sagged under the weight of it, and Kakashi felt its thickness drag the pace of his steps.

He veered off the main road in hope that the slant of the buildings would shield some of the alleys from the worst of the storm. Wind howled in the narrow passages, where the puddles beneath gutters had frozen solid. Kakashi avoided them nimbly, though the wind stung his fingertips and the exposed expanse of skin between his nose and temple.

By the time he reached the rear of the mission control center, Kakashi had nearly given up the entire project. Snow clung to his clothing and stung his skin, and he could barely make out his path due to the water gathering in his eyes.

It took time, given the circumstances, to disable the lock of the window furthest from the street. Kakashi worked at it with the tip of a senbon until it became clear that it was frozen in place; next he worked with a kunai, charged with a little chakra to warm the metal. When finally the sash came loose, Kakashi threw it up with little regard for what could be heard or proven later; his concern then was getting inside, and closing the window behind him.

Within, it was pleasantly warm and extremely dark. Things seemed to have been closed down in haste: at least one drawer in the line of tall filing cabinets stood open, though it turned out to be empty. Kakashi crept close, mindful of trip wires – though there were none – and began examining the characters listed on each drawer to determine the location of his desired documents.

It would be chuunin, he knew, and not jounin; the surname began with U, and the reports were fairly recent.

This time the lock was easier to pick: it only took a little maneuvering with the slightly bent tip of his senbon to slide the drawer quietly open. _Umazaki. Umehari. Umeki. Umisaki. _

_Umino._

Kakashi captured the relatively thin folder between his fingertips and withdrew it above the others, leaving a gap for its safe return. All of its contents were in perfect order, arranged by the date of the mission's duration. Kakashi thumbed quickly through them, careful to scan for significant gaps of time: there were none. It appeared to him that Iruka had worked fairly regularly since becoming a chuunin, though none of his missions had been of difficult rank.

The last report was the object of the entire mission, and Kakashi read it with great attention. Nothing appeared out of place: it was dated to April 28th of that year, signed and initialed by the shinobi himself, filled out in suitable detail.

_Reconnaissance mission near the Sunagakure border. Data requested successfully collected. A cohort of between four and six errant hunter nin detected in the area. _

It was the sort of work given to genin in less bountiful periods of shinobi employment, and nothing seemed to have gone wrong. Kakashi tucked it back into its folder and replaced the lot of them, shutting the drawer soundly in place.

He glanced about and listened, still, to assure himself that he had not been detected. There was one more source of information he intended to investigate before departing: the payroll. The original copy was, of course, kept electronically somewhere in the Hokage's office; however, a working hard copy was necessary to keep track of accounting in the mission control room.

By luck, Kakashi had stepped into the control room during protracted discussions about the payroll, or else he would have had little idea where the document was stored. Laminated and nondescript, it was tucked away at the back of the folder containing mission rosters; Kakashi snatched it out and flipped through its stapled pages until he came to the single, cryptic line pertaining to the object of his interest:

_Umino, Iruka…..Inactive (Withdrawn by Req.)_

He scanned the parenthetical notation a few times before righting the folder and moving again toward the window he had broken in through. It was easier to leave than to enter, though the snow still fell, and the drifts had grown substantially in height.

* * *

The blizzard slowed all village activity considerably. School was let out, missions were cancelled and delayed, and the hospital struggled to acquire necessary materials. The latter obstacle resulted in a village-wide shoveling effort that Kakashi agreed to join in, if only due to the boredom imposed by so many blocked roads and doorways.

Shovel slung over his shoulder, Kakashi worked his way through the piled snow to the village's main thoroughfare, where a number of other shinobi and townsfolk were already hard at work. A centralized plan seemed to be missing, but it didn't concern him terribly; as long as the arterial roads could be cleared, he reasoned, the rest would be relatively easy to navigate.

Kakashi drove the blade of the shovel into the thick of the snow with his foot, and began his work.

Within the hour, Kakashi had cleared enough space to allow others to join in working from the area. Mizuki was among the first to appear.

"Great way to spend a weekend, eh?" he grinned. Kakashi snorted.

"I can think of a few better. How's it going?"

"Can't complain," Mizuki answered, "other than the obvious. How're the chuunin exams coming along? You don't have to name names."

"As if I could remember any," Kakashi countered flatly before he could catch himself. He lifted a heavy shovelful of snow and deposited it in the growing bank along the roadside before going on: "pretty good though, on the whole. I'm impressed, overall."

Mizuki seemed mostly pleased.

"I'm glad," he admitted, "it's good to know that everything we hammer in is sticking."

"Seems like satisfying work," Kakashi offered up, stilling for a moment to roll his shoulders before scooping another heap of snow, "you got any openings out there, eh?"

A short laugh followed, though Kakashi did not let on that his intentions were anything other than honest.

"I'm afraid not," Mizuki chuckled, "last opening closed back in June. If this does me in, however…" he gestured to the shovel, already having developed a powerful ache in his lower back.

But Kakashi was not watching. The name of the month sounded boldly in his mind.

_June._

"Back in June? Where was I?" he forayed for further details, and Mizuki was perfectly glad to provide them.

"June, that's right. They go fast. Good hours, and stable. Summer session is always a little lighter, so it's when we bring on new people. Iruka came on in June, but before him, it had been years since anybody new got hired."

Something about the exclusivity of his post seemed to inflate Mizuki's ego, which Kakashi was perfectly happy to stroke in order to garner more information. He packed the snow bank down tightly with the flat side of his shovel to make space for another heap.

"There must be one hell of a waiting list for those posts, eh? To get somebody on so quickly, I mean."

Mizuki nodded gravely.

"Plenty of people want in, but it's rare we can take them on. So there's always this scramble, you know, to get the right person when there's a chance. It was pretty sudden last time, just a couple of days' notice."

Kakashi quietly stored the revelation in his mind, and stood up straight, leaning on his shovel.

"Well, keep me in mind, eh?" he grinned.

"You got it," Mizuki assured him, having made little relative headway.

Still, a serviceable pathway between the main thoroughfare and one of the better-travelled side streets had been formed, and Kakashi could surmise that a navigable route now existed between his apartment building and the spot where he stood. He left his shovel erect in the snow bank, either for the next volunteer or his own return, whichever came first.

* * *

By evening, commerce had mostly resumed, thanks to the shoveling efforts of the morning. Having sunk into a long period of midday slumber, Kakashi now felt restless and slightly dazed.

Hands in his pockets, shoulders sloping, he tipped his chin downward and strode through the streets of the less reputable sector of downtown. Red lanterns glowed beneath the eaves, icicles dangling from their lowermost frames. Shades of neon flickered and faded on the banks of snow mounded along the sidewalk. Strange colored shadows formed and changed in the alleys.

All around him, in the doorways and shop windows, voices carried on conversations and sometimes called out to him, offering him reduced price _sessions_ or massages. The lips that spoke the words were glossy and vividly pink, sometimes red, always parted in suggestion.

In his mind's eye he turned over numbers and dates.

_Last mission was April 28__th__, but he didn't pick up the academy post until June._

Even thinking charitably of Iruka's savings and financial strategizing, at least a month must have passed during which he did not work at all. Kakashi lingered for a moment at the threshold of a liquor store before stepping inside to thaw his fingers.

An elderly man with jaundiced eyes mostly obscured behind folds of oiled skin stood behind the counter, stooping slightly. He peered up at Kakashi as he entered, but gave no greeting.

The shelves were lined with bottles and boxes, most of them scuffed and some of them dusty, as though the merchandise were not the shopkeeper's primary concern. Kakashi aimlessly strode down an aisle, glancing over the cobwebs that had formed between once-glossy bottles and cases, his mind wandering still.

_There was no way he'd been banking on the academy job if they open and close as quick as Mizuki said._

Normally sudden retirements correlated to injuries, but Kakashi had seen nothing on Iruka's naked body that would militate against decent work. Recollected images of the chuunin's skin hovered just under the surface of his thoughts as he moved toward the back of the store, where a refrigerated case housed beer and wine.

_Maybe it's just his disposition. _

Kakashi thoughtlessly cracked the door of the refrigerated case open and began scanning the labels for a name he recognized. He vaguely sensed the shopkeeper's eyes on his back, though his attention was captured by the barest hint of motion. He leaned close, imitating the attentive gaze of an interested customer, and peered past the wire racks into the cool storage area behind the case, where a single, flickering bulb shed little light.

There was a standing form, male, he thought, and then another, crouching. He could see that the kneeling figure was female, and that hands were tightly tangled into her hair. Her cheeks were hollowed and her shoulders lurched rhythmically.

Kakashi drew back in a startled instant, whipping his head around to lock eyes with the shopkeeper. The old man grinned slowly at him, gesturing to the back of the store with a nod. A little bell above the door rang in shrill, stuttering tones as Kakashi exited back into the street.

Flakes of snow shimmered under the streetlights, driven by the wind. Kakashi paused, unsure of whether or not he was prepared to turn in for the night. Though his mind was active and tangled, he could feel exhaustion settling into his muscles, accompanied by the ache accumulated during the day's work.

He produced his keys from the depth of a zippered pocket and headed toward his apartment.

* * *

It was consistent with his luck to be assigned the first high-ranking mission after the blizzard. The mission was a run-of-the-mill assassination directive, aimed at a pair of mist missing nin who had caused a fair bit of trouble for travelers near the border.

In terms of effort, the mission required next to nothing from Kakashi. It was little more than an opportunity to clear his head. The entirety of the mission, from the receipt of the directive to the accomplishment of objectives, took under five hours.

Two of those hours were for travel. Kakashi had sped to the location, but, the two shinobi in question thoroughly dispatched – one via chidori, the other via old-fashioned decapitation – he took a longer, more scenic route back.

He licked another man's blood from the corners of his mouth, where it had seeped through his mask. The taste was warm and metallic, familiar. The air was perfumed with the fresh scent of cedar and balsam, but he could scarcely detect it for the overpowering odor of copper.

The shinobi whose corpse was obscured in black pine fronds had grappled with Kakashi in close quarters; the warmth of his body still lingered in the jounin's clothes. It was a strange and slightly disgusting sensation, and yet on some level he was grateful for the warmth: as the sun began to sink in the dark woods he thought of dying in some alcove of gnarled roots, frozen and alone.

It was a piteous thought, dying in solitude without ever having learned the things about Iruka that he wanted to know. It occurred to him that such a thing could happen just as easily in the heart of the village as in the depth of the woods.

* * *

_Kurenai._

Kakashi squinted down into his glass and tried to recollect whether or not he'd slept with her. Asuma tapped his cigarette off in a half-full ashtray and repeated the name dreamily again.

"She's a hell of a gal, Kakashi. I don't know about getting married or whatever, but I'd give my left nut to have something serious going on."

On any given night, Kakashi wouldn't have mixed liquors, but there was something tempting, that night, about oblivion. He pushed aside his sake cup and ordered another beer.

"She doesn't want something serious?" he offered up.

"I think she does," Asuma mused, taking a long drag off his cigarette, "but I don't know. She's – she's got a lot going on."

"Just talk to her," Kakashi suggested. A soft slur blurred the edges of his words.

"Yeah," Asuma sighed, "I should. How about you, eh? Seeing anybody?"

"Oh, you know."

But he didn't know: no one did. Kakashi was well aware that discretion was the better part of his lauded valor. Rarely did he reveal anything that could be construed as _personal_. He suspected that those who pried into his interior life in most ways valued his reticence; candor, after all, put rumors to rest.

Asuma was absently following shortly exhaled tendrils of smoke in their upward drift. Kakashi finished off his beer, though hints of nausea already tightened his jaw and unsettled him.

"Well," he said at length, flattening a few bills and some coins on the bar, "I'd best get my report in. Rent's up. See you around, yeah?"

The other man gave him a resolute nod and snuffed out his cigarette.

"Sounds good."

* * *

On some level, Kakashi really had intended to head to mission control and turn in his report.

Yet he found himself scaling the tree outside Iruka's apartment, climbing along that same branch, pausing at the very darkened window he had breached on a handful of previous nights. He produced a kunai from a thigh-strapped sheath and began to work at the lock, though between his buzz and frost-numbed fingers, he made more noise than progress.

His breath formed a hazy screen of steam on the windowpane as he worked. An attempt to leverage the kunai resulted in it slipping from his grasp and plunging to a mound of snow below. Kakashi grit his teeth and scowled.

As he dug inside his jacket for a senbon, the window slid open, revealing Iruka. Kakashi gazed at him in mild surprise.

"You're here," he observed.

"Did you…think I wouldn't be?" Iruka immediately recognized the stinging scent of alcohol.

"No mission control?"

"Funny thing about that."

Iruka moved away from the window, making room for Kakashi to enter. The jounin scrambled inside with little of his characteristic grace, and clambered to his feet to close the window behind him. Iruka watched, arms crossed over his chest.

"Well?" Kakashi turned and awaited an explanation he was fully aware he wasn't owed.

"_Well," _Iruka began, "I got pulled from mission control for a few days because of an investigation. Apparently somebody broke into the control room during the storm, and the drawer with my back reports had its lock picked. Know anything about that?"

Kakashi stared blankly ahead, avoiding the other man's eyes.

"Nope. Why would you pick the lock, anyway? You've got the keys."

Iruka shrugged.

"That's been my point. But look, I've got grading to do. This –" he gestured vaguely to the bed, "will have to wait."

Kakashi remained rooted to the spot for a few beats after Iruka had turned and left the room, heading through and adjacent doorway. The room spun only slightly as he followed, parsing the news as he walked.

Iruka's home was, by all accounts, simple and tidy, with little in the way of decoration. Yet it retained the kind of comfortable dignity that all attentively cared for projects seemed to, and Kakashi found it a great deal warmer than his own dwelling. The next room was the kitchen, and inside it Iruka sat at a small table, where stacks of papers were neatly arranged.

Kakashi seated himself at the only other chair, directly across from the chuunin. Dark eyes flickered up momentarily before returning to a sheet of paper under careful consideration.

"There's tea," Iruka remarked, "if you want it."

A round, nondescript kettle sat atop a particular stack of papers. The jounin glanced over his shoulder toward the countertop, where a handful of cups waited on a dishtowel. He retrieved one and took his seat again, hoping that a few cups of tea could recover a little of his sobriety, or at least lessen the intensity of the impending hangover.

He cradled the cup in his hand and began to pour tea; yet in his half-drunken clumsiness he splashed a stream of the fluid over his knuckles. With a bitten hiss, he released the cup and shook the tea off his hand, then muttered obscenities as the cup tumbled to the floor. Iruka exhaled a sharp, exasperated sigh through his nose. Kakashi rose to his feet at once, snatching up a towel from the counter.

"I've got it," he assured the chuunin, "no problem at all, my mistake. I've got it."

Iruka did his best to continue with his work as the other dropped to his knees and began to mop up tea and shattered chunks of porcelain.

Hunkered beneath the low kitchen table, Kakashi felt for perhaps the first time in his life the warm, sickly flush of remorse. Cheap as it likely was, the teacup seemed to him only the tangible manifestation of his fumbling with Iruka's life, and though he had never felt any significant concern for the man before, he found himself profoundly aware of his developing infatuation.

On hands and knees, he drew toward the other, grasping the legs of his chair and moving it easily back with a low screech.

"I'm working," Iruka muttered, sans certitude.

Kakashi tugged his mask down with one hooked finger and slipped his hitai-ate into his belt. Iruka's thighs felt firm and taut beneath his pajama pants, and Kakashi spread them according to necessity, situating himself in between.

Long, pale fingers spread over Iruka's groin, stroking his sex through dark fabric. He gulped as blood rushed lower and his skin grew warm and sensitive. The waistband of his pants was mercifully loose; Kakashi plucked open the simple tie and reached inside, circling Iruka's hardening cock and squeezing tightly.

Iruka's breath caught in his throat. The world pulsed and grew exaggerated: the ticking of his kitchen clock rang in his ears just as Kakashi's breath over the tip of his sex made his muscles tense and ache with need. When the other man's careful tongue pressed against the small slit at the tip of his cock, a low moan sounded, and his eyes drifted shut.

When Kakashi slid his tongue beneath Iruka's sex and took it partly between his lips, it was not an apology. Apologies, he knew, required admissions of guilt, and he had yet to make a single one of his intentions clear to himself or the other man. Instead, as he craned his neck to accept more of the chuunin's sex into his mouth, he thought of what he didn't know, of the things he had yet to find out, of the questions he couldn't ask, and the damage he had yet to do to in order to learn what he had no reason to wonder.

"Kakashi," Iruka breathed, his fingers settling along the jounin's neck and nape. The touch was soft and teasing; Kakashi shivered and continued on, drawing out words and sounds.

_Go on,_ he thought, _tell me everything._

* * *

**Thanks for the read! Please let me know your thoughts. Part 3 - the final part - will be up very soon!**


	3. Carnal Knowledge

**Hi all! Thanks for the reads. I really appreciate it! This is not, after all, the final part. It's a bit talky, but I hope you enjoy it! **

**Warnings: very dark, noncon.**

**Disclaimer: don't own.**

**Please let me know what you think! **

* * *

Pale sunlight woke Kakashi. He brought his hand up to his lips and found that his mask was missing, though he felt otherwise clothed. A dark eye opened only a sliver, taking in unfamiliar surroundings.

Kakashi sat up and stretched as half-formed memories of the previous night surfaced in his mind. This, he realized, was Iruka's home. The window emitting wan winter sun was the one he had often slipped through, and the bed beneath him was the one he had spent his energies in on numerous occasions.

But there was no Iruka.

A dull pain arose in his temples as Kakashi stood and headed unsteadily to the kitchen. When the small table, now clear of papers, came into view, he recalled what had transpired there: he had sucked Iruka's cock until he came, but then felt too nauseous to have the favor returned to him. After emptying the (mostly liquid) contents of his stomach in Iruka's bathroom, the chuunin had helped him to bed.

Kakashi could judge from the state of the couch that Iruka had not slept beside him. He strode toward the sink and located a glass in an upper cupboard, supposing that he must be dehydrated. As he drank he felt rather guilty for how things had gone the night before, especially so due to the interruption he had posed to Iruka's plans, and to his life in general.

Nothing in the small apartment spoke of impulsiveness or bad judgment. Kakashi had heard plenty of derisive remarks about Iruka's skill as a shinobi, but never once had he heard anyone impugn the chuunin's good sense. His furniture was simple, functional and well curated for the space; what decoration there was consisted mostly of photographs of people or places from the past. Kakashi carefully surveyed each one, searching for hints, suggestions, whispers of Iruka's past, and there was nothing.

He returned to the bedroom, where he retraced his steps to the bathroom he'd used the night before. It smelled strongly of bleach.

_Smooth._

He raked his fingers through his hair and lifted the toilet seat carefully. As he relived himself he glanced around the small room, finding absolutely nothing of note to focus on. There were no blood stains on the walls, no used bandages littering the countertop, no pornographic magazines stashed behind the toilet: all of these lacks and absences made the bathroom utterly unlike his own.

Kakashi glanced once in the mirror before beginning to turn away, and then realized in a moment of easy, simple understanding that the mirror was a door, and that the door hid a cabinet. With a light tug of his fingertips, the magnetic latch gave way, and the mirror swung open to reveal three tidy rows of medical supplies.

The bandages and ointment were typical; any shinobi would have the same in their stock. There were over-the-counter pain relievers of various strengths, and Kakashi was acquainted with these as well. On the uppermost shelf, however, were a few bottles of prescription medications with elaborately detailed labels.

Kakashi plucked one from its spot and read the printed label carefully. It appeared to be nothing more than cough suppressant, prescribed during the previous month. He replaced it and took up another, inspecting it closely as well.

The name of the medication and its purpose were unfamiliar.

_Prescribing Institution: Konohagakure Hospital._

_Prescription Date: April 21._

A couple of small, featureless white pills remained in the bottle. Kakashi eyed them before sliding the container back into its previous place, making sure that it sat perfectly in the circle of clear glass outlined by dust from which it had come.

* * *

Gossip formed around the mission control table in Iruka's absence. Asuma, who had taken to filling in for him, was not so well practiced at the scanning and filing of forms, and much time was left for banter.

When Kakashi arrived, Asuma was reclining against a filing cabinet, and Raidou was seated on the desk. They appeared to have been shooting the breeze for some time.

"Really need those extra hours, eh, Asuma?" Kakashi pushed his report across the desk with one finger and greeted Raidou with a nod.

Asuma grinned.

"Girls don't go for cheap dates."

"How much longer are you in for? I'm thirsty myself."

Raidou perked up.

"Yeah, when is Iruka coming back? You suck at this, Asuma. You've probably filed all of my reports in Riichi's folder."

"Yeah? Bad news for Riichi's completion rate, you piece of shit," Asume smirked.

"Ha-ha, very funny," Raidou rolled his eyes, half-concealing a grin.

Kakashi shared a genial chuckle at the ribbing, but remained attentive for news of Iruka.

"Anyhow, you're in luck," Asuma went on, returning to the desk, "last I heard, they'd suspended him indefinitely because of the break-in. But now, considering yesterday, they're closing the investigation."

Kakashi's glance shone with incisive interest.

"What do you mean, _yesterday? _I've been out of it."

Raidou drew close, placing a hand on Kakashi's shoulder.

"Between us, some fishermen pulled Shisui Uchiha's body out of the river," he murmured. Asuma nodded solemnly, giving a mournful sigh for wasted potential.

"What happened?" Kakashi probed.

"They said they found a note," Asuma answered, "but word is the corpse was pretty fucking mutilated. Long story short, nobody thinks the break-in was Umino doctoring his own reports. Last half of the Uchiha reports are in that same drawer."

Asuma indicated it with a jut of his thumb. It appeared mostly empty. Kakashi supposed all of Shisui's reports had been confiscated as evidence.

"Anyway, they're stationing jounin here until things get figured out. Don't be surprised if you get recruited."

Kakashi nodded dumbly and tried to absorb the breadth of what he'd learned. Raidou and Asuma returned to quiet discussion.

* * *

Kakashi was not recruited to guard the mission control room. Instead, he had received a torturously empty stretch of free time, punctuated by a highly ranked assassination mission coming up within the week. Most shinobi undoubtedly used unexpected periods of inactivity to recuperate from completed missions and to prepare for future ones, but Kakashi restlessly stalked his apartment in the dark, stopping now and again before the window to peer up at the clear, white moon.

_I should turn myself in, _he ruminated, _or they'll keep following up on a red herring._

Other factors naturally countervailed: he had no desire to explain to anyone what he had really been looking for, or why.

_Why? _

He had no explanation. It had become an obsession. It may never have been anything else.

With a flickering of fingertips he formed seals that disabled a window trap, and then lifted the window open.

_Minato, what would you do?_

Kakashi was certain that he would see it through to the end. But he would be cautious, and cognizant of the ramifications of his endeavors. However the busting of the drawer lock had been detected, it had been a severe oversight; Kakashi quietly upbraided himself for making such a gross error.

Lately things had unraveled somewhat, frayed, and spiraled into surrealism. It could have been the weight of so many missions in a row or the strange washes of color on the thick banks of snow, but something had changed the parameters of reality, and Shisui's death had confused things even further. Kakashi breathed a cloud of white steam into the darkness of the winter night and watched it fade to nothingness. It was the most pure clarity he had experienced in what felt like months.

He braced his forearms on the windowsill and stared into the dim shadows on the street below, resolving simultaneously to finish what he had begun and never to repeat it.

* * *

It was rarely Iruka's kindness, in Sarutobi's estimation, that was taken advantage of: rather, it was his reluctance to retaliate. The two were distinct in the Hokage's mind because one entailed a positive will to do good, and the other required a lack of will to react. Iruka happened to be thoroughly possessed of both qualities, but he was not naïve, and he had never needed another to reveal to him the cruel intentions of others; he had only ever needed encouragement to defend himself.

"You can resume mission control at any time, with our sincerest apologies," Sarutobi said at length, and his regret was evident and genuine.

The Hokage, in all his serenity and wisdom, was troubled. He reclined uneasily in his chair, framed by the white winter sky outside his window. Iruka could see the village in its entirety from the office's high perch, and it seemed eerily calm for midday.

"It's more likely that they weren't looking at my reports in any event, isn't that right?" he tried softly, speaking around the recent suicide. Sarutobi made a vague noise of consideration.

"Nothing was taken," said the old man, "it's hard to say. It all seems very strange."

"Very strange," Iruka echoed in agreement.

The freezing weather worsened the aching in Sarutobi's joints, and so he rose from his desk with a great deal of effort, though he bore it with dignity. Iruka stood immediately, taking the old man's arm as he often had as a boy. Sarutobi drew him close like a son.

"Look after yourself, Iruka," he enjoined, walking with the young man out into the brightly lit corridor leading to his office, "they rely on you, you know. They don't have the resources you have, to make it through times like these."

Iruka thought of his students, how they struggled through the cold to arrive on time, and how they whispered to one another of the suicide, passing on rumors and rehashing their parents' suspicions. They seemed only curious about the death itself; what troubled them was rather their preternatural sensitivity to adult unease.

"I hope this all passes soon," he remarked at length, having walked with the Hokage to the end of the corridor. Sarutobi stood for a long moment in quiet thought, appraising his favorite.

"Whether sooner or later, it will pass," he said with some finality, "but in the meantime, come see me if you need to."

Iruka nodded, bowing his head in a familiar, well-practiced gesture of gratitude. It was only a small comfort, but comfort nonetheless.

* * *

_There's really no such thing as a routine assassination._

He recovered the thought from a mass of shapeless notions. He knew that it was a memory, something he had thought earlier that same day, though now he was now elsewhere, some place sterile and still.

Voices murmured and hushed around the edges of his consciousness. He brought a hand up to touch his eye, and it was still there. His ten fingers were too intact; he tested each with a light touch of his thumb. In his muscles, something heavy and dull throbbed with his heartbeat. The sound of a door opening summoned his attention.

Kakashi craned his neck to peer up from his hospital bed. Iruka raised a hand in greeting, and the jounin felt his head fall heavily back against his pillow.

"Just in the neighborhood?" he asked. There was a rustling of papers, and then a curious silence.

He flexed his right hand, and a strange pinching sensation ran through his arm. With an upward glance he became aware of the bag of clear fluid hanging on a stand near the bedside. A cloud of dark red fluid blossomed inside of it.

"Umino?" he asked, and then, swallowing thickly: "Iruka?"

He lifted his head again to glance about the room, but he could not maintain the posture for long.

He was alone.

Aggressive warmth spread through Kakashi from its entry point in the bend of his arm. His heart sped up and a flush gave rise to patches of livid redness across his chest and stomach. His muscles twitched with strange aggravation, and he grit his teeth as his breath came shallow and labored.

Something stiff pressed against his lips, and there was steady pressure as it descended into his throat. A moment of panicked airlessness passed during which the walls of his chest burned and strained and he struggled to grasp whatever was obstructing his airway, but then cool air flooded his lungs, and his muscles slackened save for intermittent trembling.

There was a flash of white florescence, and then darkness.

Kakashi woke sometime later to the rhythmic, computerized sounds of his bodily processes. From the dull ache in his throat he surmised that his breathing had been assisted during an earlier period, though presently only a thin tube introducing oxygen through his nose remained.

He became aware of a presence through sound, not chakra. The shuffling of soft shoes on the tile floor drew closer, and he peered to his side, eyes narrow. The nurse spoke before he could summon his voice.

"Hello, Hatake-san," she greeted, adjusting the hanging bag of red fluid, "how are you feeling?"

Kakashi licked his lips, tasting blood and antiseptic, and cleared his sore throat.

"So-so," he answered hoarsely.

"You were nicked with a poison senbon," the nurse explained, smiling down at him. Her features were soft and mild; she appeared to have come gracefully into middle age. "You managed to administer an emergency multi-purpose antidote before you got here, or else you likely wouldn't have made it."

Kakashi acknowledged her with raised brows.

"Impressive, huh? Say, have I had any visitors?"

The nurse pulled a rolling stool to the bedside and sat to re-dress the man's wounds.

"I'm afraid not," she replied lightly, "but you were asking for Iruka-sensei. Would you like me to contact him for you?"

A hitch came in Kakashi's breath, though it was unrelated to the nurse replacing the tape securing the needle to his arm.

"Nah, let him be. I was just thinking I need to get this report in. It'd be a real shame not to get paid for a mission like this."

Kakashi glanced over at the nurse and she smiled; her expression was sincere and genuine and revealed absolutely nothing.

"Well then," she stood and checked the machines over one last time, "you'd best get a little rest, Hatake-san. I'm Nanami. If you need me, push this call button here." She indicated a small switch at the head of the hospital bed.

She strode to the doorway, where she lowered the lights and looked once more over her shoulder at the warrior in repose.

"Is there anything else I can get for you?" she asked.

"How long am I in for?" Kakashi inquired.

"We'll need to monitor you for another couple of days," Nanami assured him, "but that's likely all. Could be more if you don't get your rest, so goodnight, Hatake-san."

Kakashi listened to her soft shoes as she disappeared down the corridor.

_Iruka-sensei, _he contemplated her words, _they must be pretty familiar with him._

The label of the medicine bottle he had inspected days prior in Iruka's bathroom cabinet surfaced once in his mind before he drifted into a troubled sleep.

* * *

His senses returned to him before his strength, and thus he was left thoroughly bored and equally confined by his languor.

Nanami appeared around noon with an unappetizing tray of lukewarm rice and wilted vegetables.

"Lunch time," she announced, settling the tray on the low wooden table beside the bed. Kakashi eyed it disapprovingly.

"When are you gonna let me out of here?" he asked, appealing to her good taste.

"The doctor says you can go just as soon as there are no more traces of the toxin in your urine," she explained with practiced cheer. Kakashi frowned.

"Any chance of parole?"

"Well, the more you eat and drink, the faster things will move," she offered. It was little comfort, given the quality of the cuisine.

Kakashi ate dutifully.

* * *

Night, with its dearth of activity and unbearable music of mechanical hums and beeping, was the most torturous. Now free of the intravenous drip, Kakashi roamed the ward, hoping to regain full command of his physical faculties.

Regaining his clothes was next on his list of priorities. Since he had been in the hospital, he had been limited to gowns of varying degrees of comfort and coverage; they had taken his clothes under the guise of cleaning them, but Kakashi rightly suspected they had been confiscated to ensure his stay.

Though his knees felt slightly week and the muscles running along his thighs strained with the effort, Kakashi strode up and down the corridors, indulging in blind turns and descending down winding staircases that led to storerooms and sanitation closets. He emerged from a particular trip down an unmarked flight of stairs to find himself at the end of a long, narrow hallway lined with pale florescent lights. He followed the echoing sound of rustling until he arrived at a small desk, manned by Nanami.

She did not seem surprised to see him.

"You should be in bed," she reminded him, laying another card down in her game of solitaire. Kakashi braced his hands on the desktop and peered down at the formation of cards.

"Play me a game?" he appealed. Her glance darted about for a moment before she agreed, smiling, and tugged out the empty chair beside her. Kakashi slid into it with a grunt of relief.

"What are you doing down here, anyway?" he asked idly, collecting the cards she dealt him. Plain tile walls enclosed the area around the desk; there was no entrance in sight, and Kakashi could conceive of no reason to have a reception desk in such a location.

"Believe it or not," Nanami informed him matter-of-factly, "I'm on guard duty."

"Oh yeah? So this _is _a prison."

Nanami grinned. "It's more like a bank. All the hospital records are just through that door."

Kakashi noted a nondescript, windowless door a little beyond the desk.

"Hospital records, eh? Those a hot item for theft?" He laid down a pair of sevens.

"No," she laughed, "not really. It's not like that. Mostly just young kunoichi poking around for tidbits about their crushes."

"_Hospital records_," Kakashi was incredulous.

"They're just young," Nanami explained, and he could gather from the soft nostalgia warming her tone that she had some experience in the matter, "and too immature to know how to get to know somebody, so they try to know things _about _them instead. Blood type, birth day. You know."

"Oh, sure. First thing I look for in somebody is a healthy white blood cell count."

Nanami's nose wrinkled when she laughed, and again when she won the first hand.

She was a fine sport, and played on long after Kakashi's attention had faded. Being a generally credulous and nurturing person, she supposed that his vigor was waning due to the continued vicissitudes of recovery; his attention, however, had long ago been captured by the featureless door a little behind the desk.

After a few hands more, Nanami stacked the cards again, and reached under the desk to retrieve her purse.

"Do you think you can make it back to your room, Hatake-san, or shall I walk you up?" She paused, offering him her hand. He took it and rose to his feet, certain, now, of his night's plans.

"I'll make it," he assured her, "thanks for the game."

"Maybe tomorrow the warden will set you free," she smiled, waving over her shoulder. Kakashi ambled back down the corridor he had emerged from, where he waited until a series of doors closed and silence followed in their wake. When he was sure that Nanami's shift replacement had not yet arrived, he returned to the door to the record storage room, hoping desperately that it was left unlocked.

_Lucky break._

The door swung open with a low creak at the insistence of a firm push. Kakashi guided it shut quietly behind him and waited, ears trained on the alcove outside, until he was certain that he had not been detected.

Inside, dim lights revealed endless shelves of neatly filed folders, coded by name and date. Kakashi shuddered at the feel of the cool, slightly damp concrete floor on his bare feet, and the sound of his breath echoed.

Years of records stretched upwards to the ceiling. In their tidily printed tabs Kakashi could see the ghosts of ages past, some having come and gone before he was born. He trailed his fingertips along the endless spines of the folders as he came closer to the section of interest.

_Umino Iruka_.

The sensation of the folder was nearly electric; Kakashi sucked his lower lip between his teeth and tugged it from the shelf in a single motion. It was light and thin, especially compared to the venerable raft of Uchiha folders stored nearby. Kakashi glanced furtively over his shoulder to ensure that he was still alone, and then let the folder fall open in his palm.

He sifted through them by their dates.

_20 APRIL (20/04)._

Kakashi paused. If the last mission report had been filed on the 28th, he reasoned, then the intake report dated to the 20th could feasibly correspond to a mission-related injury, provided the man had been confined to the hospital upwards of a week.

_**Name**__: Umino Iruka._

_**Date Admitted**__: 20 April._

_**Medical Officer:**__ Yamada Sousuke._

_**Referring Physician**__: N/A - Emergency Intake._

_**Summary of History, Clinical Findings, and Prognosis**__: Patient presented with fracture of the superior orbital ridge. Tearing of the labial commissure of the mouth, swelling and abrasion of the upper esophageal sphincter. Teeth and jaw intact. Lacerations to the torso continuing through the abdomen. Severe rectal tearing resulting in significant blood loss. Antibiotic – _

A shriek in the upper corridor wrung a startled gasp from Kakashi, who forced the folder back into place as footsteps approached the record storage room at a rapid, panicked pace.

* * *

**So, this wasn't the final part after all! There will be another, so stay tuned.**


	4. Year of the Hare

**Hi fellas! This is part four. It very well could end here, though I have ideas for continuing it. If I continue it, I have no idea how long it will get. Thoughts? **

**Disclaimer: Don't own.**

**Warnings: Anal, oral, graphic violence.**

* * *

At the far side of the records room there was another door, stainless steel and slightly rusted. Kakashi could not begin to fathom what had seemingly every nurse in the hospital stampeding into the storage area, but he made his escape through the opposite door with preternatural speed, finding himself in the bottom level of a stairwell just as the sound of hurried orders and panicked voices drew dangerously near.

He took the stairs two at a time, rounding each landing with a pivot of his foot. His heart pounded and his breath came in quick, short pants; still he kept moving until he could hear nothing but the routine sounds of machinery. A large numeral posted on the wall of the stairwell informed him that he was emerging on the fourth floor.

Gingerly, he shouldered the heavy door open, pausing to listen for voices. There were distant murmurs, but he did not detect their coming closer. With a last shove he entered the corridor of the hospital ward as though he had never left it.

In a haze of adrenaline, he wandered back to his room. It was as tidy and innocuous as it had been when he had departed, though now it seemed even in its sameness somehow different; everything did. His clothes were folded neatly on the stool at his bedside. Kakashi stripped out of the hospital gown and dressed slowly in his own garments, though they, too, seemed to wear differently than before, as though the knowledge he had sought so desperately had inlaid his world with a new texture.

With his mask secured over the bridge of his nose, his senses felt slightly clearer, more focused. The voices he had heard in the record storage room recurred in his memory; when he stilled to listen, he could hear them still, shouting and murmuring on the lower floor, where emergency intake was conducted.

On some level he knew it was his obligation as a shinobi of Konoha to investigate any distress, and yet he felt unable to interact with anyone so immediately. His mind reeled with what felt like an infusion of knowledge too impossible to integrate. Mechanically, as if on instinct, he began moving toward the stairwell at the end of the corridor. He paused at the first step.

_Tearing of the labial commissure of the mouth._

In the strictest sense, it meant that the corners of the mouth had been torn open – it meant that _Iruka's _mouth had been torn open, the same one that had spoken to him; that had, on occasion, smiled at him, sipped tea across from him. Kakashi summoned the image of those lips to mind, full and sensitive and softly caramel-colored, and tried to imagine the scars that must have been at their meeting, pale and lightly iridescent.

A piercing shout broke Kakashi's daze as he reached the bottom step.

The corridor was choked with gurneys laden with blood-soaked figures. Nurses rushed them into rooms, pausing between bodies to check pulses and call out for bags of blood or antiseptic; bloody footprints slickened the tile floor as far as Kakashi could see.

"We've got another one!" Nanami called out, grasping the rail of a gurney to wheel it through the threshold leading to the emergency intake area.

In the confusion, Genma emerged, closely followed by Ibiki. Despite the early morning hour, both of them appeared wide awake, and smeared with blood.

Genma spotted Kakashi first.

"Oi, Kakashi," he shouted over the cacophony of squealing wheels and frantically beeping monitors, "come on!"

The knowledge that others seemed uniformly aware of something unknown to him slowly dawned on Kakashi. Genma waved him over, and when he remained still, darted across the hall to clap a hand on his shoulder.

"Come on, Kakashi," he demanded, "we're on duty, let's go."

"Duty?" Kakashi repeated, disarmed by the other jounin's apparent panic.

"Chat later, ladies!" Ibiki growled from across the hall, now surrounded by a frantically working crowd of medical nin, "get to headquarters, suit up, and head out! Now! Fucking _now!_"

Genma grasped Kakashi's elbow and tugged him along, swerving through the jostling throng of nurses, medical nin and gurneys. Some of the patients still groaned.

In the clean, frozen air of the night, Kakashi still smelled the coppery odor of blood.

At the headquarters, he changed into his ANBU gear wordlessly beside Genma, tugging on the cold mesh armor over skin-tight black cloth. Genma tightened his breastplate, and Kakashi returned the gesture reflexively. They both slipped the bands of their masks over their heads, and slung their swords over their backs.

They were joined by other ANBU in the street; Kakashi had no idea where the mission directive specified that they go, but it was clear that they were all headed in the same direction. He followed without question; they shortly converged upon the Uchiha compound.

Masks moved in the darkness. Glancing into an eerily gaping doorway, Kakashi caught sight of a cat, a fox, the long beak of a crow; now shifting, now gone. Frozen pools of blood lined the streets and smeared the lintels and posts of the thresholds.

Lanterns were hung in alternating strands down the length of the main thoroughfare, likely in anticipation of the coming week's persimmon festival. They were pale white and shown in the black of the night, some tinged eerily red by the splattering of blood, others slashed open. Kakashi progressed down the road guided by their singular glow, accompanied by the flickering shadows of ANBU agents as they crossed the rooftops.

He turned, hand on the hilt of his sword, and crouched momentarily against a bolted door, listening for activity inside. It was silent; but in the interest of caution, he rose to his feet and slammed his shoulder into the frame of the door. It loosened easily, allowing him to reach through a splintered panel and unlock the latch.

The house was dark and still. A shattered window in the rear wall suggested the killer's method of entry. Kakashi drew near it, careful of traps, and found himself stepping over the prone body of a young woman. She had collapsed on her knees with her arms beneath her; he could not visually locate her head.

A trail of blackened droplets on the wood floor led to a back bedroom. Standing at the doorway, Kakashi could see a cradle stationed beneath a moonlit window. He could hear his breath echo against his mask as he approached it, heart pounding.

There was sound in the front room. Kakashi paused and glanced over his shoulder. Some other ANBU stood among the glass and carnage, the woman's head clasped by tendrils of black hair in one hand, and her body draped over his opposite shoulder. Without any word to Kakashi, he looked pointedly at the cradle, and shook his head slowly.

He moved to the next house through the dark alley. Here the door had been rent from its hinges by a single strike. Kakashi entered through the gap, ducking to avoid catching the hilt of his sword on the remainder of the wood.

A cold draft followed him inside. For a moment it seemed silent, and then he became aware of a strange stuttering noise emanating from a rear bedroom. He approached cautiously, sword in hand, his ears trained for the soft and constant noise edged with wetness.

All of the furniture was in its place. The carpets, though corrugated in places, were neat and clean, only slightly worn. Plates and chopsticks remained on tabletops, and chairs were pulled out only somewhat, as though their occupants had just risen to step out of the room.

In the bedroom, a woman lay on the floor. Kakashi discerned that the gurgling noise was her attempt at breathing; it appeared as though a tanto blade had been cleanly inserted into the back of her neck, angled upward toward her brain. Presently she laid on her side jerking rhythmically, a dark stain of urine surrounding her. Blood leaked from her lips and nose, and her eyes stared blankly into nothingness.

It had been a long death. Kakashi laid the tip of his katana against her neck and felt the stiffness of her cold skin resist the sword. He stepped a little nearer, squared his shoulders, and drove the blade in.

Her movement stopped, and he exhaled against his cool porcelain mask. He crouched down to lift up her body, and felt a weak flow of blood seep into the mesh armor underneath his breastplate. As he carried her corpse out into the thoroughfare to be added to the growing collection of bodies to be identified and buried, he thought of Obito, and of his father, and of Iruka, and of the unnamed woman whose life he had ended out of mercy.

He thought of ruin, and he thought of waste.

* * *

The winter dawn broke rosy grey and bitterly cold. Gradually they had been relieved throughout the night; few of the first responding ANBU remained. Kakashi had waited until Tenzo arrived to take his place.

"What's the situation?" Tenzo's even voice was muffled by the porcelain cat mask.

"Hell," Kakashi said flatly.

"How many dead?"

"All but one."

Tenzo nodded and moved past Kakashi, through the wide gates of the compound. Inside, ANBU agents were digging graves and attempting to rinse bloodstained snow into the storm drains.

Kakashi wandered in the watery morning light, drained of all vitality, still reeling from the events of the night and the fading effects of the poison. His eyelids felt heavy and granulated, and the thick, viscous presence of blood lingered on the surface of his skin.

He was far from home and did not want to go there at any rate. Iruka's apartment was closer and more enticing; he hadn't the fortitude, at the moment, to face the old bloodstains in the grout of his bathroom tile.

Nor did he have the wherewithal to scale the oft-climbed tree outside Iruka's window. He circled instead to the front of the building and trudged up the stairs to the man's door, where he cursorily checked for traps before producing a senbon and slipping it into the lock.

But the door opened before he could complete his work. Iruka regarded him with no particular surprise, toothbrush clasped between his teeth, a towel slung around his neck.

"Kakashi-san?" he asked around the toothbrush.

_The mask._

Kakashi reached behind his head to free the band of the mask, but it had become entangled with his blood-matted hair. His fingers were numb and clumsy from the cold, and with each flow of warm air from Iruka's apartment he became more thoroughly frustrated; with one sharp jerk he tore the mask loose and flung it against the wall of the apartment building. Shards of porcelain scattered, and Kakashi stepped inside.

"Mind if I shower?" Kakashi pre-empted any attempt at greeting.

Iruka gestured faintly to his bathroom, and shortly followed the other man in. Kakashi stepped into the modest stall in full armor and leaned heavily on the far wall, stooping down only briefly to switch the water on. It was pleasantly hot, perhaps even searing; the small bathroom flooded quickly with steam, obscuring Iruka from view as he deposited his toothbrush near the sink and retrieved a clean towel from an upper cabinet.

"Your armor is going to rust," he remarked after a moment, now leaning in the doorway of the bathroom.

"Fuck it," Kakashi replied blankly, "I quit."

Iruka looked absently toward the ceiling. Kakashi tilted his head up into the spray of water and let his mask grow soaked; when the feeling of drowning began to make him lightheaded, he slipped the cloth down and swept the water over his face. The chuunin fell silent.

"Thoughts?" he asked, glancing toward the doorway, where Iruka lingered.

"Pardon?"

"About quitting."

"Well," Iruka hesitated, "don't quit just because you're having trouble believing that there's anybody out there worth protecting."

"You think that's why I'm quitting?" Kakashi began to work at the buckles and clasps of his armor, shedding his greaves first, followed by the forearm guards and gloves.

"No," Iruka clarified simply, "it's why_ I_ quit. I was just guessing."

And for a moment Kakashi meant to object, to argue that he knew _precisely _why Iruka had quit, to rehash the contents of his hospital records and insist that speaking around the matter was no longer necessary. Yet in a flash of grim clarity he realized that Iruka was likely being as honest as he always was, and that this particular revelation was an insinuation that he already knew of Kakashi's illicit insight.

"Give me a hand?" Kakashi shrugged to indicate the tightened straps of his breastplate, and Iruka moved forward obligingly. He paused for a moment outside the shower, then dutifully loosened the waistband of his pants and stepped out of them, ducking under the spray of hot water.

The clasps were positioned a little behind Kakashi's shoulder blades, making them difficult for him to reach without some protest from his taxed muscles. Iruka released them deftly. The heavy plate loosened like a shell, giving way to the warm, living flesh beneath. Iruka lowered the armor to the floor of the shower as he knelt down.

Kakashi watched as Iruka's fingers worked open the fly of his pants and slipped beneath the waistband, urging them slightly down. Water coursed over the flat, tight planes of his abdomen, and he broke his focus only for a moment to peel his shirt off over his head, leaving him naked from the waist up. Iruka glanced up at the jounin's face, which he suspected was a rarer privilege than fitting one's lips around the tip of the man's sex, which he did promptly as well.

Iruka steadied himself with a hand on each of Kakashi's hips and swept his tongue over the head of his cock in languid, slow strokes. Pale fingers tangled in his soaked hair and lingered there, never pushing, only touching.

The sensation was maddening, and watching those full lips envelop his sex tested Kakashi's weakened resolve. And this, too, he realized, was knowledge he wasn't owed, a memory of touch and scent and sound that others had stolen from Iruka, just as he himself had stolen knowledge of the violation.

But this was freely given. Kakashi shuddered, his senses swirling and buzzing with pleasure. Water streamed over Iruka's shoulders and back and he rose up a little, angling his neck to accept Kakashi's cock deeper into his throat.

"Iruka," Kakashi panted, slipping his fingers beneath the other man's jaw to tip his chin up, "let's – finish out there."

The water was cooling. Kakashi reached over the other man to shut it off, and when Iruka rose to his feet, the jounin caught him in a crushing kiss. He could taste the salt of his own skin and the suggestion of peppermint; when Iruka met his tongue with strokes of his own, he came into the hazy awareness that this was their first kiss.

They stumbled out of the shower grasping at each other; Kakashi stayed upright only by planting his palm flat against the wall. He kicked off the black pants, now thoroughly saturated and heavy.

"Bed," Iruka breathed hotly against his lips.

They never made it. Iruka stumbled over a misplaced satchel and Kakashi followed him to the carpeted floor, straddling his thighs. As Kakashi bruised his nipples with suction and tugs of his teeth, the chuunin reached for the satchel that had tripped him, dragging it close and rifling single-handedly for anything that would ease their coupling.

"Here," Iruka grunted, thrusting a small bottle into Kakashi's free hand. The jounin stilled and turned it over in his fingers. It was the type of joint lubricant used for folding knives and shruiken; weapons repositories everywhere reeked of the stuff, and he wasn't entirely sure if it was fit for _internal _use.

He put his reservations aside and tore the cap off with his teeth. As he sat back to coat his fingers with the oil he surveyed Iruka's body, flushed and streaked with water though it was. It occurred to him that he had not yet seen the man fully naked in the clear light of day until that moment, and he concluded quickly that it had been a piteous oversight. Iruka was lean, richly tan, and his sinewy joints still possessed the quaint and charming roundness of teen-age. He licked his lips, squirming under Kakashi's gaze, and spread his thighs open.

Iruka wasn't sure if the warm fluid that spilled onto his stomach was excess oil or his own pre-come. He arched his back with a soft moan as Kakashi's long middle finger disappeared inside of him, crooking upward as the last joint settled against his body. Another joined it, and Kakashi circled the base of his own cock with his free hand to stay a premature climax.

"You ready?" he positioned the tip of his sex at Iruka's entrance and felt a shiver pass through the other man at the contact.

"Fuck me," Iruka groaned, arching his hips up. His face was so heavily flushed that his scar stood out pale against it; it was then that Kakashi noticed the very light lines at the corners of the chuunin's mouth, short, jagged and uneven. Had his lips not been parted, they would not have been visible.

A strange emotion welled up in Kakashi and interrupted the quick but regular rhythm of his breathing, and he focused intently on the feeling of Iruka's body pressing tightly against him as he pushed inside. It was a novel sensation, and a disquieting one; had he not been exhausted and depleted most thoroughly of chakra, he would have been able to quell the unsettling emotion and exist as he did on missions: purely in the domain of his senses, a creature of the material world and no other.

He kissed Iruka, and the stuttering breath the other drew suggested that he was startled by it. Kakashi's tongue slid against the chuunin's in time with the pace of his thrusts, which picked up with every moan and grunt Iruka uttered against his lips. Tan hands moved frantically against him, smoothing over his shoulder blades and waist and the flexing muscles of his lower back and hips; the sensation was as maddening as the searing heat enveloping his sex, and Kakashi felt his orgasm build rapidly.

He broke the kiss to moan, and his voice was raspy and breathless and it dropped a pitch when Iruka tightened around him. Kakashi felt the other man's knuckles brush against his stomach as he circled his own cock, teeth clamped on his lower lip to quiet him.

His thighs tightened on Kakashi's hips as he came, forcing the jounin's cock against his prostate. The orgasm seemed incredibly protracted, beginning within him and coursing through his muscles as relief and blinding pleasure passed over him in waves. When he was again aware, it was only hazily; his lips tingled from the long, bruising kiss Kakashi had held him in, and a sensation of warmth and fullness had spread throughout him.

Kakashi withdrew, panting.

"Iruka," he murmured, sitting back to run his hands over his face. It was now mid-morning, and the full weight of his exhaustion settled over him. As he stood, Iruka pushed himself up on his elbows, rising slowly to sit; his lower back and shoulders were raw and red from the friction of the carpet, but he smiled up at Kakashi anyhow.

"You seem like you could use some rest," he stood and indicated the bed. Kakashi sat down on the edge and rolled his shoulders with a half-groaned sigh.

"You gonna stick around?"

Iruka was taken aback. He was suddenly aware of his nudity, and of the fluid clinging thickly to his inner thigh and stomach. He looked down at it, and shrugged.

"I'm scheduled for mission control later," he mumbled.

"I doubt it. Call and check."

"You know something I don't?" Iruka turned toward his dresser and reached into a low drawer to retrieve a pair of uniform pants.

"Probably," Kakashi admitted, reclining onto sensibly stacked pillows, "unless you were already aware that nearly every Uchiha in the village was slaughtered last night."

A cold, brittle stillness followed.

"Who?" Iruka asked, regaining his senses.

"Looks like Itachi. Haven't found his body yet, anyhow, and evidently the little one was going on about him at the hospital."

He laced his fingers behind his head and felt his muscles loosen and settle. He could feel himself sink into the soft cotton sheets of the chuunin's bed, blissfully sated by sex and surrounded in the other's scent. The fact that Iruka himself was still gaping dumbly was a minor irritation.

"So," Kakashi sighed, "my guess is that there are no missions going out today, and mission control –"

Iruka's phone rang in the kitchen, and he turned to get it, pardoning himself over his shoulder.

Kakashi was asleep before he could finish his sentence.

* * *

**Thanks for the read! If you have a moment, please let me know your thoughts!**


	5. In a Grove

**Hi, all! Hope everyone is having a happy holiday season. Thank you all so much for your reviews and reads. They mean a lot to me! I will be continuing this, and I no longer have a good sense of how long it will be. I hope you can hang in there with me!**

**Disclaimer: Don't own.**

**Warnings: Sexual violence, discussion of rape.**

* * *

The house was still on the shortest summer night of the year. Kakashi could see dandelions swaying, and fireflies hovering over them in the garden. He walked along the gravel path. Tall grass grew along the fence, too close to the posts to cut. It was soft, supple, yielding. He ran his fingers through it.

Earlier that day it had rained for a time; now earthworms laid out dry atop the stone path, their bodies petrified by the sun.

Ants surrounded them and picked at their corpses, returning them to the soil. The air was soothingly warm and smelled verdant, like cut grass and fresh leaves. The midsummer sun was brilliantly gold and near setting; long shadows fell in the garden, with light thick and amber like honey spreading out around them.

Dragonflies rose and dipped in the pool of rain near the gutter, skimming its still surface. Somehow the sound of their wings was piercing in Kakashi's ears as he arrived at his doorstep and peered in.

The door was slightly ajar. Caterpillars inched up along the post. Inside, the house was still, cool, and dark, sonorously vacant like the grand chambers of caves. Moths fluttered quietly in the emptiness and settled on the tips of Sakumo's fingers, loosely curled and stiff as they were. A pool of blood spread out around him. Crickets screamed deafeningly.

* * *

"_Shit._"

Kakashi brought his hands up to his face and gathered his composure. The sounds and scents of his dream receded swiftly, leaving only a faint buzzing in the back of his mind. With a dull, settling feeling arrived the knowledge that he now shared a peculiar kinship with the young survivor of the Uchiha massacre, wherever he was; the two of them were the only remaining villagers with the burden of the sharingan, and had likewise recorded in their superb memory the images of their fathers' corpses.

"Welcome back to the world of the living."

Iruka's voice reminded him of his location as recollections of the previous night slowly materialized. The hospital records room, the Uchiha compound, and the shattered ANBU mask all flickered past his mind's eye. The chuunin was beside him in bed, leaning against the headboard with a stack of papers balanced in his lap. Kakashi smiled softly.

"What time is it?"

"About six-thirty," Iruka answered, checking a clock on the nightstand.

Kakashi sat up, though his body still felt somewhat leaden. He rolled his shoulders and neck, and raised his arms over his head to relieve some of the settled tension in his muscles.

"I slept like the dead," Kakashi muttered, becoming aware only after the words were said that the expression was not the most appropriate, given the circumstances. "Any news?"

Iruka shrugged and set is red pen aside on the nightstand.

"Not very much," he admitted, "but you were right about mission control. It's closed today. School's meeting late tomorrow so they can brief us on how to talk to the kids about it."

Kakashi nodded, quiet in thought. After a moment, he glanced over his companion, noting that Iruka was still without his shirt, though he had tied his hitai-ate loosely on to hold back strands of hair. Kakashi had arrived without his; it was unnecessary with the ANBU mask, but he found himself agitated with no covering for the sharingan.

"Mind if I borrow this?" he asked, his fingers already working open the knot at the back of Iruka's head.

"It might cost you," Iruka grinned, leaning closer to allow the jounin to slip the cloth from around his forehead.

Kakashi had never much cared for kissing; by a substantial margin, most of his sexual encounters had taken place with his mask on. He was clumsy at it, and a touch too aggressive, but there was something inviting about the fullness of Iruka's lips and the responsiveness of his tongue that drew him in.

He caught Iruka's lower lip between his teeth and began to suck, slipping his tongue into the other's mouth after a moment. Iruka parted his lips to accommodate Kakashi, bringing his hands up to hold either side of the jounin's narrow, tapered jaw. Kakashi did the same, cupping Iruka's cheek in his palm, his thumb resting on the wet corner of the chuunin's mouth.

The pale scars were hidden easily by the pads of Kakashi's thumbs. He smiled dreamily into the kiss.

"They're so faint," he murmured against Iruka's lips, as though it were perfectly common practice to measure beauty not in the absence of scars, but in their proper healing.

Kakashi was aware that Iruka's right hand had tightened into a fist long before he was conscious of it, and he pulled back only a fraction before the other man aimed a blow at his temple. It was close, admirably so; as he grasped Iruka's wrist and jerked him forward with the force of his own strike, he was somewhat impressed. In an easy, fluid motion, Kakashi rolled Iruka onto his stomach and pinned his arm hard against his back, straddling him with one upward gesture. Out of pure reflex, he snatched the kunai from the chuunin's own thigh holster and held it against his neck; as the metal pressed cold and insistent against Iruka's skin, Kakashi finally stilled enough to register his own actions.

Iruka breathed carefully, his adam's apple dipping dangerously close to the blade as he swallowed. He was furious; his neck and chest were flushed with temporarily impotent rage, but he was also a shrewd steward of his own good health, and knew better than to flail or buck.

Still, his pulse raced from the memory of this same position.

After a couple of nervous moments, Kakashi exhaled smoothly and loosened his grip on the kunai, allowing it to drop from his hand. Iruka took the opportunity to turn sharply, jarring the other from his back. Kakashi sat somewhat dazedly on the bed as Iruka stood, fists clenched, jaw tense.

"Go on," he hissed, "get out."

Kakashi held the kunai out by the blade, his expression blank. Iruka snatched the knife out of his hand and returned it hurriedly to its sheath.

"Get out!" he shouted again, fists still tightly balled. Still he kept his distance from the other.

"Look, I'm sorry," Kakashi said slowly, as though the words were difficult to recall.

Iruka disappeared for a moment and returned with the soaked articles of Kakashi's ANBU uniform, sans the ruined mask.

"Just go," he demanded, and then, after a pause, stood in the doorway and regarded Kakashi with a sharp glare. "What do you want from me?"

"Guess I'd like to use your dryer," he lifted up the soaking undershirt and resisted the inclination to wring it out onto the carpet.

Kakashi sensed he was compounding his mistake.

"Iruka," he tried again, this time with unprecedented earnestness, "look, I know – I fucked up. I was, ah, concerned –"

"_Concerned_?" Iruka gave a short, sharp laugh. "Come on! What was it, huh? Curious about the rumors? Or let me guess, you want details, right? Did I like it? Did I get hard, huh? Is that what you want to know? How it felt having all those cocks shoved in me? Go on, what do you want to hear?"

Kakashi watched him, speechless.

"Here, now get out." Iruka thrust a set of folded, standard issue navies into Kakashi's lap and disappeared into the bathroom.

"Will these even fit?" Kakashi shook long creased folds out of the shirt. "I'm taller than you."

"Barely!" Iruka shouted through the locked door.

* * *

A missive was pinned to his door via shuriken.

_Charming._

Kakashi plucked it down and scanned it as he shouldered his door open. It had been quite some time since he had spent the night in his humble apartment, though it appeared upon first glance that everything was still in order.

_Upon receipt of this missive, report to the Kohage's office immediately._

There was no expiry listed, so Kakashi surmised that the directive must still be valid.

He glanced around his dark apartment, where dust lined everything but the bookshelves, and his blankets were used so seldom they required washing only a few times a year.

Leaving again was just as well.

* * *

The Hokage's office appeared to have been buzzing with activity nonstop since the reports of the Uchiha incident first came in; Kakashi noticed the dark shadows beneath the eyes of the various assistants and messengers with a note of sympathy.

Kakashi rubbed his hands together for friction as he waited to be shown into the large oval-shaped office where the Hokage presided, regal and wise, over the breadth of the city. When an assistant showed him in, he was not surprised to find himself in the company of most of Konoha's jounin, some of then in ANBU garb, others in flak jackets and navies.

"What gives?" he shouldered near Genma, who appeared to have been waiting for some time. They spoke in hushed tones.

"No more police, so we're looking at extended ANBU duty."

Genma had a talent for laconic summary. Kakashi nodded in acknowledgement and shoved his hands into his pockets, hoping to drown his thoughts in the act of waiting.

_I've seriously fucked things up this time._

He tried to distract himself from his growing dread by focusing on the task at hand: revealing his early retirement from ANBU in a tactful and amiable way that would excuse him from duty permanently without slighting anyone important. It seemed impossible, given the circumstances.

He wasn't left to his thoughts for long. Within half an hour, the aged Hokage appeared, flanked by Ibiki. The old man lowered himself into the seat behind his desk with some assistance from the other, steadying himself on his broad forearm as he sat.

"Thank you all for coming," he began, and the attention of the room focused on his wizened face.

"In light of this tragedy – of which you are all well aware – " he paused, glanced around at them, and went on, "we've found it necessary to increase on-duty ANBU presence. Therefore, each of you will need to sign up for additional shifts tonight."

A hum of conversation arose among them; Kakashi suspected friends were conspiring to share shifts with friends, and lovers with lovers. He moved through the crowd of them almost undetected, arriving at the Hokage's desk with a genial smile and open-palmed wave.

"Sir, if I, ah, if you have a moment, and I know this isn't exactly the best time, but I've decided that I might need to go into early retirement from ANBU duty."

Saturobi quirked an eyebrow. Curiosity sparkled in his dark eyes, quick and alert as they ever had been.

"Early retirement, Kakashi-san?" he repeated.

"Well, sir, I had sort of, ah, decided –"

Sarutobi glanced over his shoulder at Ibiki, who stood still and silent to his right.

"Ibiki-san, do you think you could find a use for Kakashi-san's abilities, given his _retirement_?"

The interrogator glanced Kakashi up and down as though he had never seen him before, and, finding him physically vigorous and suitably self-possessed, nodded.

"He can help with the investigation," he answered shortly, nodding to himself with his chin jutted forward.

"Do you have any plans concerning any further _retirement_, Kakashi-san?" Sarutobi inquired, barely concealing a grin.

"Ah, no plans, sir," Kakashi admitted sheepishly. In no other presence did he feel so thoroughly diminished.

* * *

Waking up in his own bed was not nearly as satisfying as it typically was in the wake of long absences. Kakashi sat up and ran a hand through his hair before searching his nightstand half-blind for his hitai-ate. He stood as he secured it over the sharingan, and noted with some cold comfort that his joints had returned to normal following his extended recovery from the poison.

The floorboards were cold on his feet, and outside his window, the village was awash with pale fog. His window grew opaque with steam as he breathed against it, peering out over the peaks of the roofs visible through the mist.

Somewhere in his cupboard, there was tea: he was sure of it. He turned over empty boxes and shook out empty paper bags as Pakkun circled nervously at his feet, sniffing at the scraps of paper and loose leaves that drifted to the floor.

"Guess not," Kakashi muttered to himself after a few more minutes of searching.

The milk in the refrigerator was scant and spoiled at any rate; Kakashi ate dry cereal and washed it down with a glass of water. Still his mouth felt strangely parched, and his throat unusually tight. He briefly entertained the notion that he was still recovering from the poison or the effects of the antidote, but even as he mulled over the idea, he knew that it was not the case.

After a few paces around his room he returned uneasily to bed, disappointed that the morning sun had not yet been able to penetrate the dense fog. The light that entered his room through the small window was wan, watery and weak.

_Still need to write that damn report._

After the mission that had left him temporarily hospitalized, he had not yet found a free moment to put a report together. And, though the thought of seeing Iruka again awoke a fluttering sensation in the pit of his stomach, he suspected that the chuunin would not be so enthusiastic about a reunion.

Nonetheless he flatly resisted the idea that whatever had existed between them was _over. _Now that the knowledge of what had happened to Iruka had been confirmed, Kakashi found himself strangely protective of it, and the idea of _rumors _to that effect circulating among their peers disturbed him. He could not recall ever having heard anything sexual at all related to Iruka; people tended to denigrate his skill in half-smirked quips, but little else.

_He seemed so certain._

Kakashi rolled onto his stomach and slid his arms under his pillow.

It occurred to him that someone must have suggested to Iruka that there were rumors about the _incident_, or else he would never have thought so. Kakashi could conceive of no possible situation in which Iruka would have overheard anyone discussing it, for, to his best knowledge, no one ever did.

He drifted between sleep and dreamy contemplation for the duration of the foggy morning, awaking with conviction only around noon, to be somewhere near on-time for his meeting with Ibiki.

As he dressed, he appraised the folded set of navies he knew belonged to Iruka. Rarely did he envy Pakkun's gift for scent-induced memory, but as the proposition of having only the most cordial and distant relationship with the chuunin loomed grimly likely, he regretted his weak sense of smell.

* * *

Iruka checked his hitai-ate in the mirror. It was smoothly knotted, tied on level, and contained every strand of stray hair he worked so meticulously to tuck underneath it.

He leaned in close, his breath forming a film of fog on the cold surface of the mirror, and peered intently at the corners of his mouth.

Of course he could see the scars; he always could. With little effort he could recall them as they had originally been, when he had hidden from duty for weeks until the stitches could be removed. But they had grown faint and very pale, almost impossible to see when his mouth was closed, and hidden entirely when he was smiling.

It was not a worthwhile project to think too long about such things. Iruka stood back from the mirror and switched the bathroom light off, emerging in his bedroom.

He was glad to be scheduled for mission control late in the day, after school let out. It gave him something to do, which prevented him from ruminating in his apartment, where things were terribly out of order: there were droplets of oil on the carpet near the bed; there were flecks of blood staining the tiles of his shower; and there was a cup missing from his tea set.

On his way out the door he paused to step over shattered remnants of the porcelain mask. They did not seem particularly sharp, but they were smooth and scattered broadly, posing a hazard to any of his neighbors who might be unaware of them.

Stooping down, he swept them into a small pile with his hands, and committed himself to disposing of it later. Smears of blood rose along his fingers and palms from cuts opened by their sharp edges.

* * *

Underneath the Hokage Monument stretched hundreds of yards of bookshelves lined with the hard-copy minutiae of life in Konohagakure. It was colder in the depths of the archive library than it was on street level. Kakashi shuddered.

"Keeps the pages in good condition," Ibiki informed Kakashi, leading him along another seemingly endless row of shelves.

Florescent lights lit their way dimly.

"Here we are," Ibiki came to a stop and glanced over his broad shoulder at Kakashi. "So. It's pretty simple, like I said. I want every Uchiha report from the last six months. They start here," he indicated a tightly bound leather volume, "and end….well, somewhere down there."

Kakashi resigned himself to a long day.

Ibiki busied himself at once, tugging down a stack of volumes and checking them over cursorily before adding them to a growing pile. Kakashi trailed ahead of him, scanning the volumes of compiled reports and selecting the appropriate ones.

"So…" Kakashi thumbed through a collection of mundane reports from May, "what do we do with all of these once we find them?"

"Look for anomalies," Ibiki answered evenly, adding a volume to the dozen he had put aside so far. "These are all copies, but they're sequenced chronologically, so anything unusual should stand out."

"Like?" Kakashi looked over a reconnaissance mission undertaken by Mikoto Uchiha disinterestedly.

"Unusual jumps in rank, inexplicable incompletion, incoherent summaries. Things like that."

"Sounds thrilling."

"It's life as a _retiree, _Kakashi," Ibiki grinned, scooping the pile of volumes he had amassed into his arms. Kakashi did the same, following him with a precariously balanced stack of books.

Ibiki deposited them on a plain square table in an open space near the back of the report archive, and Kakashi followed suit. Both of them pulled out Spartan aluminum seats and settled in to read; Ibiki produced a small scratch pad and took notes from time to time, while Kakashi struggled to keep his mind from wandering.

"Say, Ibiki….have you heard anything about, ah, _sexual assault_?"

Ibiki didn't look up from his reading, though his curiosity had obviously been awoken.

"Not recently. Why? You thinking about perpetrating one?"

"Not at the moment."

"Good. I wouldn't. Not here, anyhow. Best not to shit where you eat."

Kakashi turned the page of his volume slowly, hesitated, and went on.

"I was thinking more about ones that happen during missions."

"Oh?" Ibiki glanced over at the report Kakashi was slowly mulling over. "Does it say something like that?"

"No," he shook his head, "just asking."

"I'd say it's rare," Ibiki answered after a moment of quiet reading, "our kunoichi are tough gals."

"What about men?"

"Even rarer. You have something specific in mind?" His attention was drawn between a mission left incomplete by Fugaku and the pointed interest of Kakashi's questions. The jounin looked down again, running his finger along a line of text.

"Not really. Just rumors."

Ibiki chuckled gruffly, and shook his head.

"You little bastards love to gossip. Look, I wouldn't listen to a word those assholes say."

Kakashi nodded. If anyone in the village had a general idea of crimes perpetrated against shinobi, it would be Ibiki, and his lack of reaction to the probing questions assured Kakashi of his earlier assessment: the _rumors _Iruka believed to circulate around him did not exist.

A few hours passed in relative silence, punctuated by yawns or light coughs, as the cold air of the archives was impossibly dry. After a time, there were footsteps on the stairs, and both shinobi looked up expectantly. A young woman approached and leaned down to murmur something into Ibiki's ear; as she departed, Kakashi recalled having seen her face in the Hokage's office. Ibiki closed his book decisively.

"Done for the day, it seems," he announced, standing with a pronounced groan. Kakashi stood as well, rubbing at his temples.

"Tomorrow, then?" He dreaded the answer.

"Every day until it's done," Ibiki seemed to take special pleasure in the sheer drudgery of it. He patted Kakashi on the shoulder paternally as he rounded him to exit.

* * *

The fog had not lifted since the morning. Still, Iruka was feeling more certain of things, stable again. His students had been unusually tractable, stunned by the news. He had explained to them to the best of his ability what had transpired, and had answered their questions dutifully. After class was dismissed, he had consoled a girl who had been friends with one of the Uchiha children.

It had been a hard day, but a predictable one. Presently he organized reports in the mission control room, stopping now and again to sip his tea. As he settled his mug atop a filing cabinet, a burst of cold air alerted him to an arrival.

"Just a minute," he called over his shoulder.

"Take your time."

His blood froze. He momentarily entertained the notion of darting out the opposite exit, but his shift wasn't due to end for three hours. Instead, he took a deep breath, steeled himself, and turned to face Kakashi.

The jounin seemed as casual and effortlessly relaxed as ever, hands in his pockets, posture loose and easy. He smiled and approached the desk, pushing a half-completed report across its meticulously clean surface.

Iruka stared down at it in disbelief.

"It's not finished," he said after a moment.

"Ah, well," Kakashi shrugged, "I was in a rush."

"If you want to get paid, you need to fill it out," Iruka replied with some finality. He could not begin to determine Kakashi's motives, but he suspected he was the butt of a joke, and he had no interest in participating.

"Iruka –" Kakashi was cut off by the door opening. He glanced over his shoulder at Genma, who, red-cheeked and frost-bitten, gave him a quick grin. The jounin nodded in greeting, and turned quickly back to the other.

"Iruka," he went on, his voice low and rushed, "look, I made a mistake. Give me a chance to fix it."

Iruka watched in muted horror as Genma searched his flak jacket for the appropriate scroll. Though he was politely ignoring the exchange unfolding before him, it was impossible for him not to hear it, and the thought of his reputation deteriorating even further caused him feel suddenly nauseous.

"Are you trying to get me fired?" he hissed, flattening his palms on the desk and leaning close to snatch the report.

"No – why would I do that? – No. I'm serious. One chance."

"_Fine._" Iruka ground out, struggling not to crush the scroll in his hand, "you may have an extra day to complete your report, Kakashi-_san. _Fill out the relevant sections and bring it in _later, _when you're not in a _rush._"

Kakashi straightened and resumed his blithe demeanor.

"Thanks, Iruka-sensei. I'll do that."

Genma approached before Iruka could call for him, clapping a hand on Kakashi's shoulder. It seemed to take him by surprise; Iruka caught sight of the man's right hand flexing instinctively near his thigh holster before stilling.

"Oi, Kakashi, we're having a late birthday get-together for Hayate tonight. Think you can make it by?"

"I –"

"And what about you, Iruka? When do you get off?"

"About three hours," Iruka answered, holding out his hand for the proffered report. Genma's was messy, but no messier than usual; he filed it with a brief thanks.

"Then stop by!" Genma invited genially, "we'll still be there. What d'ya say, Kakashi?"

"Sure," he agreed. If he knew Iruka half so well as he supposed he did, then the man would most certainly drop by at the end of his shift, even if he was exhausted and utterly devoid of celebratory spirit. It would at least be an opportunity to talk to him privately.

"Great! Well, we'll see you later, yeah, Iruka?"

The chuunin nodded mutely, and watched them go. He returned to his filing with a shaky sigh only to find that his tea had gone cold atop its perch on the filing cabinet.

_It's just one more thing,_ he frowned.

And, though the mission control room was empty and quiet and perfectly orderly, Iruka could sense that it was irrecoverably less _routine_. Things were no longer predictable, and his earlier sense of returning steadiness had dissipated entirely, but neither did he feel so profoundly alone.

* * *

**Thanks for the read, and please review! I love hearing your thoughts.**


	6. Ghost Lights

**Hi all! Thanks so much for reading. It's been great hearing your thoughts on this fic, and I'm super excited to continue it. I hope you enjoy this chapter!**

**Dislcaimer: Don't own.**

**Warnings: Oral, recreational drug use, implied exhibitionism, references to sexual abuse, voyeurism, mutual masturbation. **

**Another brief note of warning: this fic is only getting more graphic from here on out, so I hope you hang in there with me anyhow! **

* * *

Time passed slowly in the bar, especially because Kakashi had chosen to drink as little as possible while still involving himself in the celebration. He bought a round unprompted and stationed himself at a barstool adjacent to the door, and laughed along with the fond, nostalgic banter that accompanied such occasions.

It was exceptionally crowded for a weeknight; Kakashi suspected the uptick in mandatory ANBU hours had led to an increase in overall stress. He nursed his beer slowly.

"Oi, Kakashi," Raidou seated himself in a nearby stool and ordered sake before anyone could intervene to pay for him.

"Oi, Raidou," he raised a hand in greeting, "how's life treating you?"

"Not bad," he shrugged, sliding a couple of bills across the bar toward the tender.

"No tab tonight?" Kakashi raised an eyebrow. The other man shook his head.

"On duty in a little under an hour," he sighed, "at least the overtime pays good. How's the investigation going?"

Kakashi shrugged noncommittally.

They drank in comfortable silence for long moments, nodding in unison as new guests arrived to wish Hayate well.

"You know," Kakashi began at length, now suitably loosened by his beer, "I keep hearing odd things."

Raidou's eyebrows lifted, and then knit in thought.

"Things that aren't really there, Kakashi?" he probed.

Kakashi laughed, though his tone remained solemn. "No, no. Whispers. You know. Rumors. Bathroom stall shit."

Awareness seemed to darken Raidou's expression. He nodded, glanced furtively over each shoulder, and leaned close to the other, bridging the meager distance between them.

"I've heard some things myself," he admitted quietly, "but here's not the place."

Intense curiosity burned in Kakashi, and he had half a mind to press the other jounin then and there, but he respected his composure and skill, and decided against it on those grounds.

"Later, then?" he offered. Raidou nodded.

"You know where I live," he pointed out. "Stop by. We'll talk."

"I will," Kakashi said, and watched as Raidou gulped down the last of his sake and rose to his feet.

"Better go suit up," he explained, leaving a tip far more generous than was required of his purchase.

He was that kind of man.

At each half-hour interval, more shinobi excused themselves for duty, paring the group down to veterans and exhausted post-shifters. Now that November was drawing to a close, festive drinks and colored lights replaced the familiar concoctions and atmosphere of the bar, and Kakashi felt utterly out of place. Heavy ruminations preoccupied him; he wanted more than anything to track Raidou down and have their promised conversation.

_Professional courtesy, _he reminded himself. When a shinobi was busy, he was busy. He produced what currency he had and left it at his place, pausing on his way to the door only to wish Hayate a healthy new year.

"You too, Kakashi," the other laughed, thoroughly inebriated and cheered by the company, "you look so down!"

The wind howled. Kakashi shielded his eyes from the debris of dead leaves and dust with the back of his hand, and noted blandly that the gales had borne in an impending storm.

A little over three hours had passed at the bar, and Iruka had never arrived. Kakashi did not mistake his disappointment for surprise. He had expected that this would require more than an apology to repair, though he wasn't entirely sure why; by his measure he hadn't _done _anything but read a couple of pages of somewhat classified text. On the scale of abuses shinobi could commit against one another, it was hardly anything.

But it _was _something, and the uncomfortable weight of guilt caused his shoulders to slouch as he took the longest route home intentionally to pass by the mission control room.

Inside, the light was warm and familiar. Kakashi ducked under the eaves and peered in through a high window at the tidy desks along the back wall. A jounin stood there proffering up a scroll, and behind the desk sat a woman with thick dark hair.

There was no Iruka.

_Must've already gone home, _Kakashi reasoned, _bad weather, after all._

He sprinted along the well-traveled alleys, stepping nimbly over discarded rubbish and pools of black ice. Iruka's building was sensibly close to his place of employment, and Kakashi made it there in little time, though the portion of his face exposed to the air burned with the frigidity of it. He scaled the barren tree outside the chuunin's window, and found the room inside dark and empty.

For a moment he was still. It was possible, he knew, that Iruka was intentionally avoiding him. He lowered himself from the tree with long, lingering motions, unwilling to accept the idea.

But it seemed likely, and understandable at that.

As he stalked home in the dark, rain began to fall. Kakashi zipped his flak jacket up to his neck and jammed his hands in his pockets, ducking to avoid the onslaught as best he could.

The alleys provided no better protection than the thoroughfare, as the rain fell straight and penetrating; he opted, therefore, for the shortest route. As he passed closed storefronts and stalls he became aware of footsteps nearby, though he had no immediate interest in identifying them.

Reflex won out over temperament. Kakashi's eyes widened.

"Iruka-sensei!" he raised his hand and waved, crossing the thoroughfare to catch up with the other. Though it was dark and the rain obscured his vision somewhat, he recognized Iruka easily by his build and gait, both of which had been stored in perfect detail in his memory.

"Kakashi?" Iruka squinted as he drew near.

"You weren't there," Kakashi pointed out.

"Neither were you," Iruka shot back, effectively silencing the other.

As the rain made contact with the street, it formed a glaze of ice that built on itself by the moment. Kakashi grimaced under his mask and jutted a thumb over his shoulder.

"My place is closer. Come up?"

Instead of answering, Iruka followed.

It was a short distance to Kakashi's apartment, but an arduous one nonetheless. The ground grew slick and the rain fell in heavy, constant sheets. By the time they arrived at Kakashi's door, the jounin's fingers had barely enough feeling to form the seals necessary to disable the numerous traps situated there. He managed after a protracted moment, and ducked inside, waving the other in.

The apartment was warm, and little else. As he kicked his sandals off and shrugged out of his frozen flak jacket, Iruka could make out few of the comfortable amenities he normally associated with _homes_.

A faint clicking sound revealed itself to be the tapping of Pakkun's nails on the wood floor. He glanced firstly at Kakashi, then at Iruka.

"Oi, Pakkun," Kakashi greeted fondly. The little dog gave a curt nod and conducted himself back into the corridor.

_Shy, _Kakashi mouthed. Iruka crossed his arms over his chest and glanced about, waiting.

"Interested in a drink?" the jounin produced a bottle of sake from an otherwise poorly stocked upper cupboard.

"I'm interested in an apology."

Iruka watched as Kakashi's shoulders sagged. He settled the bottle back in its place and leaned heavily on the countertop, balanced on his flattened palms.

"I really do regret it," he said at length, his voice even and low.

"Is this a habit of yours? Something you do to everyone you sleep with?"

Kakashi shook his head. The grammar of the question caught him off guard. He had not, so far, conceptualized it as something done _to _Iruka as much as something done _about _him.

But he was beginning to sense the other's logic, even if it felt counterintuitive. He turned to face him.

"I don't know why I did it," he admitted, and already his stomach seized from the invasiveness of talking about himself. "It's not typical."

Iruka shifted and glanced toward the door.

"One chance," Kakashi repeated, "that's it. One more chance."

The experience of _pleading_, no matter how simply phrased and confidently submitted, was dizzying.

"I'm not fucking around," Iruka said, "one, that's it."

He stalked closer, and Kakashi trained his focus on his reflexes, hoping not to repeat the circumstances of the previous night. When Iruka brought his hand up to his cheekbone, he flinched. The chuunin hooked a finger under the edge of his mask and tugged it carefully down, sensing the barely contained tension in the other man's muscles.

"I'm serious," he repeated.

"I know," Kakashi acknowledged, his hand slowly circling Iruka's wrist. His instinct was to disarm him; it always was, and he had little hope that he could reverse such deeply ingrained inclinations. Instead, he pressed the other's palm to his lips.

Iruka's skin was rough, like his, and calloused at every gripping surface, like his; but it was also richly dark and uncommonly warm, given the circumstances. Kakashi had never assessed him as _beautiful_; his features were perfectly plain and agreeable, though more expressive than most. Yet his affable openness was the source, so far as Kakashi could tell, of the easy sexual appeal he seemed to inhabit so naturally. There was something maddening about his sturdy athleticism, and the effortlessness with which he surrendered to pleasure.

Kakashi released his wrist and settled instead for sliding probing fingers up the ridged plane of his abdomen, capturing the hem of his shirt with a hooked thumb. Iruka raised his arms and shrugged out of it, losing his hitai-ate and hair tie in the process. He ran his fingers through his damp hair and then reached out to flatten one palm gently against Kakashi's chest, tugging down the tab of his flak jacket zipper with the other hand. It was heavy with moisture and slid easily from his shoulders; Kakashi made a mental note to throw it in the wash later, after he'd dug out his scrolls, weapons and cigarettes. Then Iruka's fingers were sliding beneath his shirt, ghosting over the angles of his jutting hipbones, and he wasn't thinking clearly anymore.

Fingers threaded in damp, dark hair and Kakashi brought their lips together. Iruka's mouth tasted sweet and lightly sour, with the barest note of yeast. The realization that he must have stopped by briefly for a beer in celebration of Hayate's birthday dawned vaguely on Kakashi.

"What kept you late?" he murmured, working his fingers underneath the waistband of Iruka's pants.

"Mmm – my replacement was late," he answered languidly, running his tongue along the meeting of Kakashi's pale neck and shoulder.

"Didn't stay long at the bar, then," he noted.

"Don't remind me."

And so Kakashi didn't, though the answer seemed strange. He gripped Iruka's waist and kissed him again, bruisingly. He could feel the ridge of bone in the bridge of the chuunin's nose beneath his prominent scar, and when they broke for breath, Kakashi was panting. Iruka's cock pressed insistently against his hip.

The bedroom was tidy and sparse, containing only a bed, desk and chair, and a single photograph propped up on the windowsill. Kakashi's window commanded a fine view of the village's rooftops, but Iruka only caught a glimpse of it before Kakashi was backing him into bed.

"Green?" Iruka grinned and ran his hands over the emerald-colored, shuriken-embellished bed spread.

"Housewarming gift from Gai," Kakashi clarified, carefully lifting the waistband of the chuunin's pants over his leaking erection. Iruka arched his hips to help, and in one easy motion, he was naked. He moved back somewhat, edging up to the headboard as Kakashi kicked his pants off and joined him in bed.

"You know," Iruka murmured as he slid his fingers through the thick silver hair at the base of Kakashi's neck, "you never answered my question the other night."

The jounin was nibbling along the hollow of his throat, sucking at points, smoothing over the inflamed skin with his tongue.

"You asked me a lot of questions," he pointed out, and his breath over Iruka's wet skin inspired a shudder. He worked his way down, dipping the tip of his tongue into a shallow navel, and then running its smooth underside over the tip of Iruka's cock.

"What do you –" Iruka sucked in a breath through clenched teeth, "—want from me?"

It was the question Kakashi felt least equipped to answer. He was perennially disinterested in categories; what things were _like _mattered less to him than what they _were. _He craned his neck to allow Iruka's sex to slide deeper into his mouth, brushing against the back of his throat. His cheeks dragged against the sensitive head as he drew back, breathed hotly around it, and leaned in again.

Long, pale fingers slid underneath Iruka's sac and stroked slowly, drawing a startled moan from the chuunin. He spread his thighs on instinct alone, and tightened his hold on Kakashi's hair.

Kakashi drew back again to breathe, trailing the tip of his tongue up the length of Iruka's cock. He had no idea how to respond, and surmised that _I don't exactly know _wasn't an acceptable answer, no matter how true it was. And he wanted to do this right, having come close to severing it entirely. He allowed his eyes to slide shut, and concentrated on his least articulated desires, the ones he rarely thought of and never assigned words.

"I want," he murmured, lips brushing over the clear fluid collecting at the tip of his sex, "I want more than this."

Iruka exhaled sharply. Rain poured outside, collecting in a heavy glaze of ice over the city. Kakashi hummed against the other's sex as his shoulders and neck were teasingly caressed, and though nothing had explicitly changed between them, he felt strangely exposed.

It was foreign and disquieting and utterly intoxicating.

* * *

The world Iruka awoke to was not the one he had fallen asleep in. The city shone in the pale morning sun as if it had been cast in glass. Telephone wires sagged under the weight of the ice, and the naked branches of trees drooped to the shining asphalt beneath its burden.

He quietly suspected that school would not convene, but decided that he should go in anyhow, to get ahead on his grading.

It was surreal making such mundane choices in the presence of Hatake Kakashi's sleeping form. In the cool light of dawn, the contours of his face seemed even finer than they did in less revealing light. Iruka knew better than to risk touching him; even looking felt risky, and so he turned away, attempting to slip out of bed with the utmost care.

"There's…spares in the closet," Kakashi slurred, shifting in place.

"Ah."

Iruka rightly predicted that he meant clothes.

Stacked on the shelves of a shallow closet were a few iterations of the same navy garb; Iruka selected a set and slipped into them, noting with muted surprise that he and Kakashi wore roughly the same size, give or take preferences for fit.

In the kitchen he found his jacket, still moist and cool from the previous night. He zipped it on anyhow, and lingered for a moment in the doorway, wondering if he should say goodbye.

He decided against it.

_No need to bother if you know you'll see them again, _he reasoned.

* * *

"All done," Kakashi sighed, closing the last volume. Ibiki nodded and grunted vague approval.

"All done with the _jounin_ reports," he clarified, "the chuunin and genin reports are in another section."

Kakashi lowered his head onto his folded arms and damned his luck.

_Of all the times to quit…_

"No time for that," Ibiki snapped, rising to his feet, "come on, let's get moving."

He led the way to a secluded section of the archive that was, so far as Kakashi could sense, totally abandoned. The air was still and particularly cold, smelling of paper and undisturbed dust.

Ibiki turned a pocket watch over in his hand and gestured to a high shelf of pristinely aligned volumes.

"You know the drill," he grinned, "so get to it. I've got some business to attend to." He paused after turning, and peered over his shoulder. "I'll know if you slack off, Hatake."

"Of course you will," Kakashi muttered under his breath.

He was left alone with his thoughts, which immediately centered on Iruka, and the mystery of his past that seemed to twist more tightly into secrecy even as it unraveled.

_Don't remind me. _Iruka's resistance to discuss his attendance of Hayate's get-together had troubled him the night before, but he had known better than to press it at the time. Presently it constituted another misfit turn in the riddle that preoccupied him relentlessly.

Kakashi tugged a few of the heavy tomes down by their spines and stacked them near the end of the narrow corridor.

He worked his way down the shelf, punctuating his progress with piles of books. As he reached the end of the relatively short span of Uchiha chuunin reports, he happened upon the long expanse of _other _chuunin reports, and realized that Iruka's must be among them.

_What's the point_?

He hesitated, recalling that he was, in fact, operating on his last chance. In any case, he felt certain that the report he'd read in the mission control room summed things up neatly.

But his curiosity warred with his conscience, and one had always dominated the other.

_Nothing good's going to come of this,_ he warned himself, even as he ran his fingers along the spines of bound reports, scanning them for the chuunin's surname.

_Umino._

It was unlike him to wage such fierce internal conflict, but Iruka warranted it. His hand stilled on the glossy black binding, and after long moments, withdrew it from the others.

The handwriting of the early copies was charmingly messy, though a sight better than Kakashi's at present. In the details of the reports Kakashi detected a litany of simple mistakes, which he reminded himself firmly never to bring up. Judging by the rank, Iruka had likely never made quite enough to be comfortable; Kakashi supposed his remark about the academy money had likely been true, if accompanied by vast omissions.

He slid to a seated position against the shelf as he flipped through them, scanning rapidly from page to page. The last page clung to the back cover, and for long moments he thought of leaving it that way, as he had promised.

Instead he ran a senbon along its edge and turned it carefully.

At first it looked the same.

_We received a directive for a reconnaissance mission near the Sunagakure border. Data requested successfully collected. We confirmed the presence of a cohort of between four and six errant hunter nin detected in the area._

Kakashi read it over, eyes narrowed in concentration, until the difference became clear.

There were pronouns, and they were all plural.

* * *

Night had fallen by the time Kakashi emerged from the archives. The streets and sidewalks had been strewn with salt and sand, but the ground was still treacherous; the cold air did, however, bring him somewhat out of his daze.

_He wasn't alone. _

He could come up with no way to comb the archives for a matching report date. They seemed to be sorted by shinobi, and Iruka's report mentioned no other name. As far back as he could remember, nobody had perished on a mission near Suna, so he tentatively ruled out the possibility that Iruka's partner had been killed.

Raidou lived in an older building with a view of the hospital. He hadn't always lived there: Kakashi could recall visiting him at a slightly smaller but somewhat updated apartment when they were teenagers, but he had moved in his early twenties. It had made the daily treatment of his facial burn easier to manage, and was a little larger to boot. Kakashi quietly respected the calculated sensibility with which he had made the decision, though he suspected it troubled him personally more than he displayed.

Kakashi made his way to the man's door from memory, stepping over extinguished cigarettes and crushed cans on the stairs. He knocked firmly, mindful of the peeling paint, and took a conscientious step back.

There was a shuffling sound, and then the slide of metal, and the door swung open.

"Genma?"

The jounin leaning in the doorway grinned broadly. He was naked from the waist up and missing his hitai-ate, though the familiar senbon twirled between his lips.

"Hey buddy," he greeted, "what's the occasion?"

"Uh –" Kakashi stammered, supposing he must have mistaken one apartment for the other. He was interrupted by a commotion in the apartment's tight entryway.

"Genma, what the hell? You don't answer another man's door. Get in there," Raidou chided, hustling the other out of the way. He smiled sheepishly at Kakashi and opened the door a little wider.

"Sorry about that," he apologized, "come on in."

Kakashi closed the door behind him. It was warm and close in the apartment, and the air smelled sweetly of smoke. There were no overhead lights; instead, strings of multicolored holiday lights had been tacked up near the ceiling in the living room, and low candles burned in a couple of scattered teacups. The overall effect a queer pinkish-blue glow cast over the small room, tempered with extremely dark shadows.

"Make yourself at home," Raidou invited, stepping into a small kitchenette to produce a few bottles of beer. The coffee table between the couch and two chairs was scattered with bottle caps and playing cards, with scarcely enough room for drinks. Kakashi accepted his and settled onto the couch; Genma reclined languidly in one of the free chairs, and Raidou took the other.

"So," Raidou said, leaning toward the table to settle his beer down, "you wanted to talk rumors."

Kakashi nodded.

"Well, take this stuff with a grain of salt. I don't quite know what to make of any of it, but…" He ran a hand through his hair and sighed.

"A little while ago, a few months I think, I was on an ANBU assignment with the Uchiha kid –"

"Itachi?" Kakashi inquired.

"Right, Itachi. And he and I, we're doing surveillance. And it's still, you know, night watch, it's quiet. So he reaches over, in my lap, and well, he's grabbing at my dick. And I'm saying, look, not interested."

Genma smirked. "Raidou's a real pussy about mission sex," he remarked.

Raidou rolled his eyes.

"I don't get my jollies when my life's on the line. Big deal."

"It's a matter of taste," Kakashi offered helpfully.

"Anyway," Raidou went on, "I sort of put it out of my mind. I thought, well, these young kids who go on rough missions, they get strange ideas about things. But I did think it was a little weird, somebody so young – with somebody he didn't even know. I guess I should have reported it."

He scratched the back of his neck and glanced downward in regret.

"You didn't have any proof," Genma reminded him. "Nobody thinks he smoked his whole clan just because you popped a semi when he grabbed your crotch."

"I didn't," Raidou protested, "but now I'm hearing all this stuff going around – people saying there was hinky stuff going on out there, at the Uchiha compound. Some of the med-nin said they found injuries that weren't – that didn't make sense. Fucked up stuff."

Kakashi watched Genma as Raidou spoke. He had produced a small-bowled pipe with a long, narrow stem, and had begun to disassemble it. As Raidou paused to take a healthy swig of beer, Genma pinched a heap of dried, leafy material from a small enamel box, and packed it into the pipe's bowl.

"So anyhow," Raidou concluded, "guess we'll have to take care in how we deal with all this. That kid who made it…can't be easy."

Kakashi nodded solemnly.

"Oi, Kakashi, take a hit of this."

Genma carefully lit the pipe over one of the flickering candles, and then blew it out with equal attention. He held the mouthpiece between his teeth and inhaled slowly, drawing in a generous drag. He waved Raidou over with a lazy gesture of his fingers, and when the man leaned close, fit their lips together. Kakashi watched as tendrils of thick smoke escaped between the corners of their mouths.

Raidou exhaled the remainder of it with a loose sigh.

"You really should try it," he agreed, "helps with the nerves."

"Helps with the lovemaking," Genma corrected, grinning.

"What is it?" Kakashi inquired. He couldn't match the scent to anything in particular.

"Shiranui special. Cut it myself. Come on, live a little."

The mouthpiece was presented to him in the strange-colored light, and he accepted tentatively, slipping his fingers underneath the warm stem. The smoke tasted bittersweet and it stung his throat as it passed into his lungs, but the effects were immediate. His nerves tingled and his senses grew pleasantly hazy.

_It had nothing to do with Iruka whatsoever._

The tomoe in his sharingan began to spin, and he brought his hand up to his hitai-ate, startled. Images that were more than dreams and less than recollections flickered and changed in his mind's eye, enhanced by the sharingan.

_It was a cold morning after all the frost had thawed, and the air was moist and breathable. Yellow light pooled in the gutters. From the soft earth, tender buds pushed up toward the sky._

"_Look," Obito said, and then: "shut up, just look." _

_They huddled together outside the window, partly concealed by a low fence. _

"_Doesn't look pregnant," Kakashi muttered. _

_Kushina laid back carefully in the bathtub and soaked her hair. She ran her hand, fine-boned and elegant, over the gently curving plane of her stomach. Her knees were bent and when he craned his neck, he could see the suggestion of vibrantly red curls of hair between her thighs. Obito's eyes were wide and alert, fixed on her heavy breasts._

"_Here," Obito breathed, his knuckles brushing against the fly of Kakashi's pants, "I'll do yours, you do mine." _

"_He'll kill us," Kakashi scowled, "no way."_

"_He's not here."_

_Obito's fingers were cold and damp like clay; Kakashi's hips jerked in response. He fumbled with the other boy's clothes, unsure of himself and distracted. _

_He watched Kushina, but he did not see her. He thought of Minato, of the act that brought her to this state, of his back, ridged with muscle and sweat-slicked, heaving above her. _

"_Be quiet," Obito urged, but his strokes were fast and certain and their forearms bruised one another and Kakashi bit down on his lip –_

"You good?"

Kakashi drew his hand away from the covered sharingan, breathing heavily.

"You can crash here, if you want," Raidou offered. Genma was tugging the zipper of his pants up, looking boneless and sated.

"No, no," Kakashi waved him off casually, "I uh, I should get home. Work tomorrow."

"Right." Raidou smiled. "Well, if you hear anything else, keep me posted, okay?"

"Sure," Kakashi agreed, rising to stand.

Outside, the air seemed colder than before, though he could not determine how long he had been at Raidou's. From the sparse street traffic, he surmised it was later than he had expected to be out.

It was difficult getting home in the ice, especially given his compromised balance. He felt along the bricks and breathed deeply through his mask, struggling to clear his senses.

_There are no rumors, _he decided. It seemed natural, then, that the only person who had any knowledge of the event was the one who had accompanied Iruka on the mission.

He resolved to inquire about a master roster of assignments the next day, if he survived the ice.

* * *

**Next chapter is coming up soon! Please let me know your thoughts, and thanks for the read!**


	7. Peony Lantern

**Hi all! Thanks so much for your reads and your awesome reviews. I love knowing what your thoughts are, so please don't be shy! I do accept guest reviews.**

**As always, I hope you enjoy this chapter, and I intend to have the next one up shortly.**

**Disclaimer: don't own.**

**Warnings: violence, light sexual touching, violence, meditations on non-con. **

* * *

The knocking was soft but insistent. Kakashi's fingers tightened on the handle of the kunai stowed beneath his pillow before he was fully conscious. He pushed himself up and listened; the sound had ceased, but as he came to his senses he realized that it must have been a visitor.

Pakkun sat patiently in the center of the room, watching as Kakashi scrambled to dress. The jounin tugged on his pants and shirt as quickly as possible, rolling his mask up over the bridge of his nose.

"Who is it?" he asked Pakkun, supposing the industrious dog may have checked.

"It's that teacher," he responded gruffly, erring on the side of propriety though he knew what had transpired between the man and his master.

Kakashi stepped over him and narrowly avoided slipping on a pool of water that had formed around his damp flak jacket. He held the doorframe as he peered out into the hall.

"Oi, Iruka-sensei," he called out to the man's retreating back.

"Ah, Kakashi-san," the chuunin seemed startled as he turned. His expression was mild and gentle and completely inscrutable. Kakashi looked him over as he approached, noting a neatly folded parcel under his arm.

"Your clothes," Iruka presented the stack of navies, no doubt freshly washed.

"Ah," Kakashi accepted them and glanced over his shoulder at the uniform he'd borrowed from Iruka, still scattered across his floor. "Yours are uh, in the wash."

"No hurry."

There was a beat of silence. Iruka glanced a little beyond the other's shoulder, catching a glimpse of his rear window. He cleared his throat.

"Kakashi-san, I – I guess I wanted to apologize. I shouldn't have said – there are a lot of things I shouldn't have said."

"Don't mention it." Kakashi paused, then swung the door open a little wider. "Want to come in?"

"Ah, well, I should get to work," he fidgeted for a moment with his hitai-ate, and then went on, dropping his voice a pitch: "this is all between you and me, alright?"

"_This?_" Kakashi leaned in his doorway, arms crossed over his chest.

"This, ah – look, I hear about it enough. I'm just waiting for it to be old news."

"Who brought it up with you at the bar, Iruka-sensei?" It was a gamble to ask, and he knew it. A moment of sheer panic passed during which Iruka looked confused, and

Kakashi was nearly convinced that his theory had been wrong.

"It doesn't matter," Iruka finally shrugged, "people know about it, so of course they're going to talk. But there's no reason to bring it all to the surface again."

He decided not to press it, satisfied that he had been right. Iruka raised an open palm and gave a weary smile.

"I should get to work." He hesitated. "Later?"

Kakashi nodded and lingered in his doorway as he departed.

"Drinks tonight?" he called.

"I get off at four-thirty," Iruka replied, waving a last time as he rounded the corner.

Kakashi closed the door softly behind himself and leaned against it, hands tucked into his pockets.

_Need to straighten up around here if we're having drinks, _he mused. Navies were still scattered across the kitchen and threshold leading into the bedroom. He pushed off from the door and headed toward the table, bending at the waist to scoop up clothes.

The uniform he had borrowed from Iruka was faded somewhat, with greyed creases at the knees and waist. He supposed that the chuunin replaced his clothing less frequently than he did.

In the bottom of the small closet in his bedroom was a shallow hamper. He stooped to drag it out, tossing a few articles of his clothing in before heading into the kitchen to retrieve Iruka's. On the floor near the table was the shirt he had peeled off the other man during the ice storm. He stopped as he lowered it into the hamper, holding it to his nose for long moments.

An idea occurred to him.

"Pakkun, you around?"

The telltale sound of nails tapping on the wood floor alerted him to the dog's presence.

"Yeah, boss?"

"Wanna help me out with something?"

"Sure, boss," he agreed, settling down near Kakashi's feet.

"Smell this," he offered the pug the shirt, "and tell me who it smells like."

Pakkun dutifully obeyed, burying his nose in the fabric.

"Smells like Iruka-sensei," he determined finally.

"Who else?"

He returned to the cloth intently, his brow wrinkled in concentration.

"Well," he scratched his ear thoughtfully with a hind foot, "a little like you. And a little like that other teacher, the one who works mission control."

"Mizuki?" Kakashi offered. Pakkun grunted agreement.

"Thanks, Pakkun."

Kakashi felt rather disheartened. It made sense that Iruka would have been in close proximity with Mizuki; as Pakkun had indicated, he often worked mission control, and replaced Iruka when his shifts concluded. He finished his chores in short order and readied himself for another round of research with Ibiki.

It was only when he was on his way to the archives that he recalled having seen the control room after Iruka's shift the night of the ice storm.

_Mizuki wasn't there._

A cold, settling feeling caused him to pause briefly long before the winter air penetrated his clothes.

* * *

"I have a question for you, come to think of it."

Ibiki glanced up curiously from his scratch pad.

"Well? Out with it."

Kakashi closed the book of Uchiha genin reports on a pen, and glanced casually upward.

"Is there, ah, something like a master mission roster I could look at? I wonder…maybe there's a pattern in pairs who took missions together."

Ibiki tapped his index finger on the table for a moment as he thought.

"Sure, I'll let you have a look. Make it quick."

He led Kakashi to the secluded center of the archives, down a pair of spiraling cement staircases.

"What year do you want?" he inquired.

"This one."

Ibiki strode into a dimly lit chamber with blank walls and low-flickering torches. There, in an ancient cabinet secured with upwards of seven seals, were a series of thick scrolls, each designated by month and year.

"Knock yourself out, but don't dick around. I'll check on you within the hour."

Kakashi waited until he heard the heavy footsteps disappear up the stairs, and then tore into the scroll containing the data concerning April's missions.

They were arranged by date, which simplified things a great deal. He scanned rapidly, shuffling paper through his hands as he passed over meaningless rafts of dates and names.

APRIL 15 – 20/15—NAMIASHI RAIDOU/GEKKO HAYATE

APRIL 16 – 20/16 – UMINO IRUKA/MIZUKI

He stopped reading immediately and rewound the scroll, inserting it carefully into its place among the others, though his heart pounded as though he had just drawn back from the edge of a precipice.

_Makes perfect sense._

A cruel, perfect clarity washed over him, but his thoughts were quickly interrupted.

"Hatake!" Ibiki's voice boomed down the echoing stairwell, and Kakashi stepped out into it to look up at him.

"Yeah?"

"Get up here now!"

_Could he have known? _Kakashi consciously stopped his throat from tightening as he sped up the stairs. Ibiki waited restlessly at the top, scowling.

"Your services are needed in the Intelligence Division. Let's move."

There was no time to answer. Kakashi trailed along, intentionally remaining a step behind in an effort to collect his thoughts. His mind raced, but he gave no outward indication of his turmoil, waving at acquaintances on the street as they rose to ground level.

Ibiki keyed them in through the heavy metal doors, and was quickly flanked by a number of shinobi in high-collared grey coats. They whispered fiercely among themselves, exchanging updates and inquiries. Kakashi followed them into a dark concrete stairwell where their voices echoed like the hum of flies.

They emerged in a long, sterile corridor that smelled strongly of ammonia. Embedded in the blank walls were windows into small cell-like chambers fit with aluminum tables and chairs.

Hijiri emerged from an unmarked door and slipped his bloodied gloves off.

"We confirmed it," he said simply.

"Where's the holding area?" Ibiki was flipping through a clipboard of documents.

"Near the border of Amegakure, in the woods. We have rough coordinates. It's just a residential place. They store the parts in the basement."

"Parts?" Kakashi asked without considering the circumstance. A number of heads turned to regard him.

"Body parts," Ibiki clarified, "we caught a pair of fuck-ups trying to make off with some of the Uchiha corpses. Apparently they'd already made it out with a few sets of eyes."

"That's confirmed," Hijiri clarified, "four sets of eyes, eight eyes total. They transport them in liquid-filled canisters –"

"Get those coordinates on a map and let's pull a directive together," Ibiki commanded. The attendants around him immediately darted off in all directions. He turned to Kakashi, still scanning the documents attached to his clipboard.

"Report to mission control in an hour, and tell Shiranui to come too. Bring your warmest gear."

"Will do."

* * *

One hour was hardly enough to settle his affairs, so he prioritized.

Kakashi raced to the jounin standby station in hopes that Genma would be lingering somewhere nearby.

He was in luck. The man was stretched out on one of the worn warm colored couches with his fingers laced behind his head.

"Yo," he prodded the sleeping jounin's shoulder with some disregard for his own safety.

Genma blinked up at him blearily.

"Kakashi?"

"Yeah, get up. We need to report to mission control in an hour. Heading to Amegakure, but I don't know more than that."

"Fuck," Genma groaned, "I'm hung over."

"You don't say. I'm going to get my gear. Later."

It was taciturn even by Kakashi's standards of conciseness, but he was gone before Genma could raise the issue.

* * *

It was imperative, especially with pre-genin, that the live blades be separated from the trainer blades; unfortunately for Iruka, not all instructors were as fastidious about weapon safety as he was. Thus he found himself on his knees in his classroom's storage closet, spending his lunch hour sorting out the sharp shuriken from the dull.

Footsteps surer and steadier than any child's alerted him that he had company, and he suppressed a sigh.

_Great, another impromptu parent-teacher conference, just what I need._

"I'll be with you in just a minute," he called out preemptively, hoping to stay their temper.

"I'm afraid that's a minute I don't have."

Kakashi's shadow fell over him, and he looked up at him wide-eyed.

"Kakashi-san? Is – everything alright?" Iruka slowly lowered a live shuriken into its appropriate bin, and awaited news.

"Everything's fine," Kakashi assured him at once, "just wanted to let you know I'm about to head out."

"I didn't see anything for you in the upcoming folder," Iruka noted aloud, immediately embarrassed at the admission that he checked. It did not seem to faze the jounin.

"Ibiki handed it off to me in person. Won't be on the books until after we get back."

Iruka carefully closed the plastic bin and slid it into place on the shelf, rising to stand.

"Well," he scoured his thoughts for something appropriate to say, though Kakashi always compromised his composure, "come back alive."

It was an old shinobi standard, the sort of well-wish one might find in a greeting card. Kakashi glanced over his shoulder to make sure that they were alone in the classroom.

"I didn't want it to get late without you knowing I had to go," he explained, "since we had plans."

It sounded perfectly reasonable, but then again Kakashi had a peculiar talent for carrying off the bizarre with his particular brand of nonchalance. It occurred to the chuunin that this sort of checking-in was something the jounin likely did only rarely, if ever.

"It's very kind of you to let me know," he smiled, and then, smile unfaltering: "that door locks, you know."

Kakashi's gaze flickered to the deadbolt at the latch and fixed there for a decisive moment. He stepped inside and turned the lock behind him, bringing him flush against Iruka. He circled the other man's waist with a hooked arm and brought their bodies tighter together.

Iruka slipped his mask down with a practiced slide of his thumbs, and then their mouths met, hard and insistent, teeth and lips and tongues colliding hungrily. Kakashi's hands pushed under the other's shirt and grabbed handfuls of firm muscle and smooth flesh; Iruka brought his hands between them to brush firmly against the jounin's growing arousal.

"Iruka," Kakashi gasped, breathing hard against the other's mouth. His cock was completely hard beneath the heavy cloth of his pants, but he knew there was no time.

"You want me to?" Iruka was tugging at his fly, his finger teasingly tracing over the zipper.

"Rain check," he ground out, struggling to keep his voice low.

Iruka smiled against their lingering kiss. Some time ago he had heard an adage about the famous Copy-Nin, something to the effect of him being a first-rate shinobi, but a thoroughly second-rate human being. It had always seemed very apt. But, as he watched Kakashi's retreating back through the fog-framed classroom window, he began to reevaluate it, albeit slowly.

_Maybe being a human being is a process, _he mused, _and Kakashi is picking it up as he goes along._

* * *

Genma was already scanning the one-page directive when Kakashi strolled into the mission control room with his gear loaded into a single pack on his back.

"Oi," he greeted, handing the directive off. Kakashi accepted it and began to look it over as Ibiki discussed filing procedures in hushed tones with the chuunin behind the mission desk.

The mission was straightforward enough. A few missing nin, evidently from villages outside of Fire Country, had, under the direction of a crime syndicate, stolen a slew of eyes from Uchiha corpses before they had been finally interred. One unlucky shinobi had been captured and interrogated; the coordinates of the holding location were now carefully mapped and in the possession of Kakashi and Genma.

"Time matters," Ibiki informed them briskly, "so don't dick around like I know you're inclined to. Turn in the eyes at the hospital the minute you get back. They'll be expecting you. Is this all clear?"

Both nodded mutely, and, after another moment's appraisal of the map, set off.

* * *

Five days were allotted for the entirety of the mission, though it was common knowledge that mission control tended toward overestimation. They had come twice as far as estimated by nightfall.

Genma alit on a sturdy branch and raised an open palm, signaling Kakashi to stop. The other stilled near him, training his senses on the sounds of the forest.

There was a cold, shifting wind in the trees, scattering dried leaves and pine needles among the fronds of the ferns below, but nothing more. Kakashi could sense no chakra other than his or Genma's. A small clearing was visible only a few paces ahead in the faint light of the white moon. Kakashi nodded toward it, and Genma affirmed his intent with a pointed glance. The two lowered themselves to the ground, and began the process of setting up camp.

They couldn't risk a fire, so Genma passed over the raw provisions for the ready-to-eat. Kakashi, whose preference to work alone was well known among his colleagues, set up the small weatherproof tent.

"Protein bars and tuna," Genma announced with mock enthusiasm, offering the other's portion to him. Kakashi zipped open the flap of the tent and waved him inside, though the quarters were cramped and allowed only for hunched sitting. An upended flashlight provided their only illumination.

Kakashi tugged the pull-tab top off his tuna and began to eat without complaint, and Genma followed suit, though with some expression of vague disgust.

"Strange they sent me instead of Raidou," Kakashi wondered at length, having finished his meager rations.

"Raidou's on a mission right now," Genma informed him.

"Ah. So things really are getting back to normal."

It unsettled him that things could so quickly reassume the shape they'd held before they had changed. The Uchiha massacre had left a gaping hole in the village, but as he meditated on his unease he realized it was his knowledge of the events surrounding Iruka's inactivity that truly demarcated the present from the past. Before he had become involved with the chuunin, things had been simple, if not a little monotonous. Days had bled into nights, and missions into ANBU directives. He had been used to the rhythm of it, hours of adrenaline rushes and bursts of agonizing pain, and then long blank stretches of time in his apartment spent sleeping.

And now, things had changed. He thought of Iruka during his free moments, increasingly non-sexually. His obsessive curiosity had grown into curious obsession, or something different, subtler.

"Doubt we need more than six hours."

Kakashi was startled from his thoughts. He glanced up and then nodded agreeably, unfurling his tightly rolled sleeping bag with practiced motions.

"Yo, we should share," Genma suggested. Kakashi raised an eyebrow.

"What?"

"It's cold, I'm freezing, so I'm just saying: we should share a bag."

Kakashi stared.

"For warmth," Genma clarified.

"What are you getting at?" Kakashi pressed.

"Ha-ha, funny. If I wanted to bone you, I wouldn't go for some goofy ass set-up like this. I'm serious, I don't want to freeze my nuts off."

"It's not _that _cold." It was a blatant misrepresentation.

"Come on, Kakashi," Genma protested, "if I'm gonna die on a mission, I'd rather it not be of hypothermia."

Kakashi relented and muttered his reserved agreement in monosyllables, smoothing the sleeping bag out along the floor of the tent. He slid inside first, and then grudgingly made space for the other jounin, who lay back with a relieved groan.

It was the first still moment he'd had since encountering the scroll in the archives, and his mind immediately traveled from the mission at hand to the discovery he had made earlier.

_Mizuki works mission control, so he must have redacted the report in case anybody got curious. _

He couldn't remember noticing anything amiss about the document itself, but he had read it while trespassing in the dark midst of a storm, and had not been on the lookout for signs of tampering.

_He probably reported the busted lock, _Kakashi reasoned, _and suggested it was Iruka messing with reports. _

Things began to fall together. Genma sank deeper into sleep, humming softly now and again, and with every realization, Kakashi felt more awake. A plan began to materialize in his mind, and with some certitude of what he had to do, sleep came more easily, though his dreams were dark and eerie.

* * *

Iruka locked his door behind himself and tucked his keys into the front pocket of his flak jacket before hanging it on the doorknob.

His apartment was finally tidy again, though it had taken time. He surveyed the breadth of it from the entryway, smiling at nothing in particular.

It had been a good day.

_I should go shopping, _he chided himself as he peered into the modest refrigerator situated in the corner of his kitchen. For the last few days he had been preoccupied, and his regular schedule had gotten away from him.

He began boiling water for tea, and started his rice cooker. Steam quickly clouded the small kitchen, and so he moved to the living room, where he spread out his to-be-graded portfolio of papers on the coffee table, and lay down on the sofa.

In a sense, he was surprised. It didn't shock him that Kakashi was interested in sex; village gossip had long revered his perpetual readiness. Iruka was only taken aback by what it seemed to be becoming, and by how it made him feel.

With slow, thoughtful motions, he unwrapped his leg bindings, massaging his ankles after a long day on his feet. His brows were knit in thought.

Iruka considered himself practical. After the _incident, _he had set reasonable goals: go out every day by late June, socialize by late July, sleep the night through without medication by August. By September, he thought he might even try dating again, though that hadn't felt right at the time, and he had moved ahead only a little dejected.

It had taken so long just to feel _average_ again that he had postponed all expectations of feeling _good. _

A decisive _click _signaled that his serving of rice was finished. He stood and crossed to the kitchen, then fetched a bowl from his neat cupboard. As he closed the cabinet door, his eye was caught by the empty space left by the broken teacup.

And he smiled.

He thought, sometimes, of talking with Kakashi about it, since the jounin seemed so intent on knowing. But he hesitated to reward his invasiveness, and when he tried to form the words in privacy, they wouldn't come.

_There's not much to tell, _he reminded himself. He remembered none of it clearly, and some of it not at all. It had all happened terribly quickly, and before the worst had begun, he had sustained a blow to his forehead that dimmed his consciousness and obscured his vision with blood. About six or seven of them had participated, some consecutively, others simultaneously. They had taken turns holding his thighs and wrists, and though there had been voices, they were muffled and distant.

_Don't think about it. _Dark eyes slid slowly closed, as if to physically dispel the memory. Unthinking, he scooped up a healthy amount of rice on the tips of his chopsticks and brought it to his lips.

He drew back with a gasp as the first bite of rice stung his tongue with searing heat. He blew cool air over it and tried again, swallowing with some satisfaction.

There was plenty to be done before he could sleep. It was better, he decided, that Kakashi was busy after all; otherwise he might never get all his end-of-term grading finished.

As always, he was less convincing to himself than anyone else.

* * *

The day passed quickly due to the swiftness of their travel; they stopped only briefly at midday to eat, and again in the afternoon to rest and drink. By evening, they had located the storage area, which turned out to be a residence in the style of old manor houses, all labyrinthine corridors and sprawling quarters.

Upon mutual agreement they decided to wait until the evening had progressed and the majority of the household – which, so far as they could assess, consisted of the syndicate member, his wife, their child and a handful of staff and guards – settled in for the evening. Concealed by the trees, the two jounin constructed a makeshift map of the house based on their casing, and formulated a strategy.

Then, they waited.

Wind sifted through the trees, and flocks of crows drifted upward from the tall grass at the rear of the house. Evening subsided to night, and just as the moon was near its peak, a figure stirred at the rear door.

Kakashi straightened instinctively and trained his vision on the source of the motion. A wiry dog emerged through the door and shuffled off into the grass, and a woman in a pale kimono stepped out after him, shivering and impatient.

Genma descended from his post before Kakashi could even suggest it; and, in a glinting flash of metal, covered the woman's mouth with his hand, and pressed a kunai hard against her neck. She bit at the palm of his glove and half-exhausted herself struggling before Kakashi stalked closer to assist.

"Call for him," he hissed in her ear.

Genma flattened his forearm against her neck and tightened it sharply, adding: "don't scream."

Kakashi flattened his back near the door and gave the signal for Genma to uncover her mouth.

His arm loosened somewhat, though his grip remained certain and inescapable. The tip of his kunai pressed pointedly beneath her jaw, and he spread his fingers only slightly, allowing her to draw a wet, shaking breath.

Adrenaline pulsed through Kakashi with every beat of his heart, and for the first time on a mission he did not feel completely indifferent to his own wellbeing. In his mind this mission was the first of a two-part directive, the first initiated by his village, and the second by his own moral commitments. The former would end here, in this manor house near Amegakure; the second would end in Konoha, where a terrible rot concealed itself presently.

* * *

**Thanks so much for reading! Next chapter should be up soon. In the meantime, please let me know what you think!**


	8. Gates of Horn

**Hi all, and happy holidays! This is the final chapter, though not the final installment, of this fic. It's also the most graphic, so please mind the warnings! I want to thank you all for your awesome detailed reviews, and for your continued readership. Thanks for being there!**

**Disclaimer: Don't own.**

**Warnings: Graphic violence, graphic torture, anal, references to rape.**

* * *

Kakashi cut the old man's throat no sooner than he emerged bleary-eyed and bellowing through the door. Genma had intended to let the woman go, but she began flailing as soon as her husband fell, and so he left her unsure as to whether she was dead or unconscious.

That much was easy.

The corridors were dark though elegantly appointed; as he checked empty quarters for occupants, Kakashi began to suspect that the man and his wife were civilians paid to stash the parts due to their convenient location in the woods, and nothing more.

The shinobi on hire protecting the parts were of little consequence, though great agitation; Kakashi intended to expend as little chakra as possible in anticipation of his later errands, and Genma seemed to be just as conservative. There were only eight of them, but nonetheless they took time to eliminate.

"Think that's the last of 'em," Genma surmised cautiously, stepping around a half-splintered doorpost. Kakashi emerged from the shadowed half of the corridor into a patch of moonlight, where he cracked his knuckles and listened for long moments.

"Think so," he agreed at length.

Neither of them had sustained much damage, though neither were unscathed. Genma's portion of the combat had been primarily hand-to-hand; Kakashi had remained long-range.

"You good?" Kakashi could make out a few dark stains suggesting blood marking the other's shirt.

Genma shrugged.

"Pretty good. You?"

"Fine."

The basement was concealed by a trap door hidden beneath a rug. Genma produced a flare from his hip pouch and dropped it down the steep shaft, illuminating a stained cement floor and rusted ladder bolted to its far wall. Kakashi lowered himself down first and located a light switch.

Flickering florescent lights cast eerie shadows around stainless steel shelves of canisters and jars.

"Do we bring it all back?" Genma was bloodier than Kakashi had thought. In the pale, artificial light, he appeared somewhat drained.

"We can't," Kakashi replied, "find the Uchiha eyes, break the rest."

He reasoned that it would be more difficult for errant shinobi to use the parts if they were badly decomposed. As he checked canisters and found them to contain pieces other than eyes, he tossed them over his shoulder, leaving them exposed on the concrete floor. Genma rifled through the shelves at a brisk pace as well, shattering jars and upending bins as he went.

"Got 'em," he announced. Kakashi turned on his heel and rushed to the other's side, taking ahold of a slender metal canister.

"There should be eight," he reminded him.

Kakashi could not surmise whom they had belonged to in life. Dormant and estranged from their owners, they were black and glazed, and seemed very small. He shifted them to a single vessel, draining most of the liquid onto the floor. Memories arose and wove their way to the surface of Kakashi's consciousness, and though the warmth of Obito's last breath was never far from his cheek, it seemed then especially close. For a long moment he stilled, resuming movement jerkily only when his partner spoke.

"Guess we're done," Genma made one last searching pass through the storage cellar and found nothing of note.

Kakashi nodded.

"Let's head out."

* * *

Dawn had broken by the time they returned to the forest. The frigid air was clean and refreshing, renewing Kakashi's resolve with startling clarity.

_Mizuki. _No more tasks and obligations remained between himself and the final pieces of the puzzle. Whatever remained of the mystery that comprised that part of Iruka's past that existed in shade and shadow now stood to be revealed; nonetheless, Kakashi had begun to suspect that he should not undertake the project alone.

Though he was inclined to double his pace returning home, Kakashi remained eminently aware of Genma's health. From flickering glances to his rear left he could discern that the man was favoring his right side, and holding his right arm at a peculiar angle as if to avoid straining his shoulder. It was unlike Genma to

After about two hours' travel, he paused in a clearing, now bathed in pale gold morning sun.

"Oi, Genma," he waited at the bank of a frozen stream. The other jounin seemed startled to see him still, and lowered himself from the branches of a great oak accordingly.

"What's up?"

"Want me to check you out?" Kakashi offered. Genma appeared to be only mildly surprised.

"Don't beat around the bush or anything," he grinned, though even his familiar smirk seemed weary.

"Let's set up and rest," Kakashi suggested, gesturing to the tent rolled up in the pack slung over his back, "pick up in an hour or so."

Genma gave the most thoroughly noncommittal answer he could without risking a shrug. He planted his senbon temporarily in the bark of a tree, and began staking the ground for their tent.

Kakashi briefly scouted, and, finding nothing but a few wayward crows and meadow thrushes chirping in the wild fronds, returned to climb into the tent. Genma had already stripped off his flak jacket, and was in the process of peeling his shirt over his head.

The first aid kit was at the bottom of his pack, and Kakashi had to dig through extra provisions to reach it. The hinges of the metal case protested due to the cold, but gave way after a moment's coaxing. Inside, in neat pockets and compartments, were the small and mostly innocuous materials that formed the narrow line between recovery and demise. Kakashi withdrew a few sealed packets containing antiseptic pads, and tore their tops off with his teeth.

Genma cracked his knuckles in his lap and waited, sensitive to Kakashi's keen eyes on is back.

"Senbon," Kakashi muttered, sweeping one of the alcohol-soaked cloths across a swath of blood-stained skin.

"I feel like a fucking pincushion," Genma shuddered as the antiseptic stung in a hundred little pinpoints of pain.

"You look like one," Kakashi observed, "there's no real cluster. Looks like they went for quantity over quality."

"Tell me about it."

As he cleaned away the dried blood, a particularly swollen mound of flesh beneath Genma's left shoulder blade caught his eye. He leaned close enough to feel his breath condense to fluid against the other man's skin, and determined that one of the senbon had broken off in his muscle tissue, likely from the force of his armor and flak-jacket in motion.

"Yo, Genma…" Kakashi began absently as he fished the tweezers out of the first-aid kit, "can I talk to you?"

"Uh, sure," Genma agreed, somewhat off-put by the timing.

"You can't ever repeat any of this," Kakashi warned, his tone deathly serious, "none of it, to anyone."

"Wait," Genma stopped him, "is it about Raidou?"

"No. Why?" Pale fingers traced over the swollen skin, locating the emergent tip of the senbon.

"I got a policy against keeping secrets from people when it's their own business, is all," he explained, "so if it's about Raidou, I'm not gonna keep it under wraps."

"It has nothing to do with Raidou."

"Go for it, then." Genma hissed as the flat edge of the tweezers aligned on either side of the broken needle.

"Have you ever heard of anybody, any shinobi, getting _assaulted_ recently?"

Genma's brow knit in thought until the tweezers dug in, capturing the tip of the senbon. He tightened his jaw and swallowed hard as Kakashi withdrew it from his muscle.

"Ah, well, no, I guess not," he answered. "Why?"

"Didn't think so."

Kakashi placed the senbon in a small plastic bag and sealed it, tucking it inside the kit. It was standard procedure to retain foreign objects removed from bodies, in case infection or poisoning set in sometime later, and the agent needed to be identified.

"Well," he went on gravely, "a while back, Umino quit taking missions because, on a mission, he was – he got – there was an assault. Multiple – _assailants._"

"Holy shit!" Genma whipped around in shock, and Kakashi righted his posture with a firm hand to the shoulder.

"Knock it off," he chided, "still need to clean this up and bandage it. Anyway, things about it don't add up."

"You don't fucking say?" Genma gaped, "what the fuck about it _does_ add up?"

"Reports don't match. The one in the control folder is different than the copy. And Umino thinks – he thinks everyone knows. Far as I can tell, nobody does."

"And?" Genma winced as Kakashi applied firm pressure with his palm to an adhesive bandage over the site of the wound.

"And the common denominator here is Mizuki."

"Umino's buddy?"

"He was on the mission, but the control folder report was altered to make it look like Umino went alone. Mizuki works control, so he has access. And he's been telling Umino about all these _rumors _that don't exist."

Understanding seemed to dawn on Genma as he turned his shirt right-side-out and prepared to pull it over his head.

"So that's what you wanted to sniff out when you came over," he muttered, mostly to himself.

"I want to close the book on all this," Kakashi said with some finality, closing up the kit and tucking it back in the bottom of his pack, "and I think Mizuki has answers. But Umino…Not sure he wants any of this public."

Genma peered incisively over his shoulder.

"You want me to help you beat it out of him," he predicted.

"Would you?" Kakashi asked point-blank, his expression flat and unaffected.

"Shit, Kakashi," Genma sighed, "what if you're wrong?"

"I don't think I am."

Genma thought for long moments, raking his fingers through his hair. He chewed his lower lip in the absence of his senbon, then finally resigned himself to his fixation and produced another from his jacket. It seemed to help him think.

"He can't know who we are, if you wanna keep this all quiet," he decided.

"Wish I still had my ANBU mask," Kakashi lamented.

"You can use Raidou's," Genma offered, unprompted.

"Think he'll let me?"

"Nah, but I've got the keys to his locker." Genma paused, grinning. "Perks of shacking up."

"Ah."

They shared a canteen of icy water, and then resumed their travel with renewed vigor, though the wind was just as bitterly cold and arid. It gusted against their course, and did slow their progress considerably; nonetheless, they camped securely in the root system of an ancient pine, and entered through the gates of their village early in the following evening.

* * *

Raidou's mask fit tightly and smelled of some herbal poultice, and with his senses so perilously heightened, Kakashi could identify every note in the aroma. He peered down at Genma as the jounin cased the apartment building one last time before scaling the stairs and stilling next to him.

"All clear," he confirmed.

"You ready?" Kakashi spoke flatly though he was prepared for the other to think better of his agreement any moment. In that case, he knew, he would go it alone.

"We can't kill him," Genma repeated himself yet another time that night, without any trace of his typical levity. He had begun to suspect that there was more between Iruka and Kakashi than the fraternal bond of Konoha shinobi, and with his certitude came anxiety as to whether or not Kakashi would be able to contain his emotions. His strategy, however rudimentary and stunted in its formative stage, was to head off Kakashi's aggression by overemphasizing his own.

"Right," Kakashi agreed distantly, and then, again: "you ready?"

"Let's clean house."

Kakashi kicked in the center beam of the door with one hard thrust from the hip, and shredded two explosive tags glowing red with chakra before they could detonate. Genma followed close behind, snapping a trip wire with the tip of a tanto.

A persistent keening sound greeted them; Kakashi slammed open the door at the furthest reach of the apartment to find it was a woman's voice. Mizuki was bewildered in profile, naked and kneeling with a dark-haired woman on her hands and knees before him.

"What the –"

Before he could finish, Kakashi had jerked his head against his chest with a firm forearm to the neck, effectively cutting off all sound save for a weak gasping. Genma closed in to cover the woman's mouth as Kakashi stepped back, separating them.

"Damn good of you to get her ready for me, Mizuki," Genma sneered as he pulled her struggling against him. She screamed as best she could in her closed throat, but subsided to whimpering when the jounin covered her nose as well. "Let's go have some fun, huh?"

He left Kakashi to Mizuki, dragging the woman through the open door of an adjacent bathroom.

There was a bathtub in the corner. He forced her in on her stomach, straddling her on his knees as he quickly bound her arms behind her back with wire, followed by her ankles and thighs. After only a moment her struggling had rivulets of her own blood coursing over her back and sides; Genma covered her mouth with a gloved hand as he plugged the drain and started the faucet.

"Alright, old girl, I got no problem with you. But if you scream, if you raise any kind of ruckus, if I get it in my head you're trying to get out of this fucking tub, I slit your throat. You got it?"

She was crying, and the mucus welling in her nose made it difficult to breathe given the rising water. A gurgling sound accompanied by bubbles was her only reply. Genma shut the water off.

"Give me a nod, baby."

She nodded weakly.

He left her there, the lower half of her face submerged in water, with a cord of wire around her neck stretching to the binding on her ankles to dissuade her from lifting her head. The water level was low enough to allow her to breathe through her nose, but high enough to muffle her screaming.

Genma closed the door behind him as he returned to the bedroom, confident that Kakashi had Mizuki sufficiently under control.

Furniture was scattered and the sheets had been removed from the bed. Genma could see a few shards of wood splintered across the mattress in the moonlight, along with several craters in the drywall of the bedroom. Presently Mizuki was pushing himself up on shaking arms, his legs folded beneath him. Kakashi stood over him, waiting.

"Old juice box in there sure likes it in the ass, huh?" Genma remarked as he closed in, jerking Mizuki to his feet by his arms. He held him in a headlock from behind, hoping that Kakashi would take the cue to move forward with the interrogation.

"Fuck you," Mizuki spat with a spray of blood.

Kakashi landed a solid strike to his jaw, followed by another to his temple. Blue bruises began to blossom atop swollen skin.

Mizuki panted for breath.

"Who…are you?"

"Vengeful ghosts_._"

"What…the fuck…do you want?"

"April. You were on a mission with Umino Iruka. Tell me about it."

Mizuki licked a line of drying blood from his split upper lip and scowled.

"Don't recall anything," he began, but Kakashi cut him off.

"Let me remind you."

He slammed his knee into the man's naked groin, bracing himself with a hand on his shoulder. Mizuki strained to double over, but Genma held him fast. Kakashi repeated the blow and the chuunin lurched once before coughing a few mouthfuls of vomit onto his chest and stomach.

"Try again."

"Mother…fucker," he slurred, spitting the last of the refuse out. When Kakashi raised his knee again, Mizuki stopped him.

"Fine," he grunted, "fine. Easy mission, finished it quick. I had some debts, Iruka helped me…pay them."

Genma watched as Kakashi produced a kunai from his thigh holster and absently checked its tip with a strand of Mizuki's hair. He drew a line of beaded blood down the side of the chuunin's face, and stilled the weapon just below his jaw, above his jugular vein. Genma could feel the cool, flat edge of the blade against his arm. It was distressing only from the standpoint of their agreed upon decision not to kill the man regardless of what he revealed, and so he intervened.

"Fucking pathetic," he laughed, "fucker sells out a teammate to pay his gambling debts. Do you think Sarutobi will laugh or cry?"

Mizuki's breath came shallow and slow.

"Who…said anything about…gambling?" he muttered.

"You're gambling right now and you don't even know it," Genma growled, "listen you silly son of a bitch, you're holding a couple of deuces waiting on a face card in the flop. If I were you, I'd start talking."

Kakashi's hand tightened on the handle of the kunai.

"I owed – some associates – for a favor," Mizuki ground out, but Kakashi stilled him by pressing the kunai against his mouth.

"Tell me what happened to Iruka," he commanded evenly.

"He got fucked."

The words had barely left Mizuki's lips before Kakashi had knotted his fingers in a fistful of pale hair, jerking the chuunin's face upward. He held him there for another series of battering punches, stopping only when Mizuki showed signs of losing consciousness. He let the man come to his senses and spit up a few more gulps of mucus-laced blood.

"I distracted him, somebody hit him," Mizuki wheezed, "he passed out. Few guys I owed fucked him. I didn't."

Genma could sense that same flicker of murderous intent. He tightened his grip on Mizuki's neck, squeezing another bloody cough out of him. Shards of his molars collected at the edges of his lips.

"This story's gonna sound real fucking inspirational when you tell it in prison," he snarled.

"Doubt it," Mizuki gasped, "Iruka won't say shit."

"Why not?" Kakashi's tone was blank and curious.

"Because I told him not to, and he does what I say. He'd suck my dog's dick if I told him to."

For a split second Genma was sure Mizuki had just ended his own life with nothing more than bravado and bad judgment. He braced himself for the explanation and the trial all in one wince behind his mask as Kakashi leveled the kunai directly at the chuunin.

But he didn't plunge it into a soft eye socket, as Genma had predicted; instead, he dragged the tip from one cheekbone to the other, across the bridge of Mizuki's nose, leaving a trail of streaming blood. The chuunin bit down to muffle a scream, but failed. Genma squeezed his neck momentarily to quiet him.

"Names," Kakashi said simply. Behind Raidou's mask, the tomoe in the sharingan began to whirl around its center, preparing to carve Mizuki's confession into the tissues of Kakashi's mind.

"N-no fucking chance," he stammered.

Kakashi caught Mizuki's left hand in his, pressing his thumb hard into the center of the other man's palm. The fingers spread open reflexively, though Mizuki struggled to jerk his arm away, earning him a hard throttling from Genma. Kakashi grasped the chuunin's trembling index finger against his palm, and, senbon pinched between his forefinger and thumb, began to slide its tip beneath the nail.

"Fuck!" Mizuki roared, gasping for air as his voice grated in his weakened throat, "fuck – st-stop!"

"Names," Kakashi repeated, forcing the senbon deeper. Blood welled up thick and black underneath the nail, and emerged at the tip of his finger.

"Making seals ain't gonna be any fun after this," Genma sneered, hoping to hurry the process along. Night was progressing quickly, and he worried it would be dawn soon, and all the more difficult to slip home undetected.

"F-fuck," Mizuki groaned, his resolve breaking as Kakashi began on his middle finger, "fuck – I'll – fuck, please – "

Kakashi plucked the senbon out as purposefully as he had inserted it, and waited patiently as the chuunin listed a series of names. Some sounded distant, and others strangely familiar; he recorded them in his memory with perfect precision, closing the sharingan when the other was finished.

"That's enough for tonight," Kakashi decided, slipping his senbon back into its place in his jacket. "But we'll be seeing you."

"We've got the goods on you, sweet boy," Genma reminded him with a fierce tightening of his hold, "don't you fucking forget it. From now on, it's a matter of time."

"If I were you, I'd sleep with one eye open starting tonight."

Genma flattened his forearm against Mizuki's neck and held tight until the chuunin ceased to struggle. He let him slump to the floor and stepped over his prone body as he strode toward the busted door, Kakashi close behind.

They removed their masks when they reached the street.

"Thanks, Genma," Kakashi's breath was white in the winter air as he returned Raidou's mask. "Sorry about the blood. There's something on the inside, too, not mine."

"Oh yeah?" Genma ran his thumb over the cool porcelain interior of the mask. "Ah, yeah. It's the stuff he puts on his burn."

"It's not healed yet?"

"Well," he shrugged, tucking the masks under his arm, "it doesn't hurt anymore, and it doesn't hold him back. When you're a shinobi, I think that counts as healed."

He stopped at the end of his street and jutted his chin at Kakashi.

"Later, man. And let's keep this on the down-low."

"Definitely," Kakashi breathed, watching the other's back as he retreated deeper into the shadowed lane, the ANBU masks glinting white in the wan moonlight.

* * *

"Welcome home, boss."

Pakkun seemed to have made some effort at cleaning up the apartment; clothes that had previously been strewn across the floor had been dragged into a pile, and Kakashi's sandals, normally scattered near the door, had been relocated to a rack.

"Oi, Pakkun," Kakashi greeted, "thanks for straightening up."

Nails tapped lightly on the floor as the pug followed Kakashi to the bathroom, where the jounin leaned into his shower stall and switched the faucet on. Pakkun sat in the doorway, his tail beating softly against the wood floor as the room flooded with steam.

"You ok, boss?"

Kakashi methodically stripped out of his clothes and left them piled in the sink.

"Yeah," he answered, ducking beneath the spray of warm water, "the vomit's not mine."

"Ah," Pakkun supplied generously, as though he hadn't been able to tell in an instant who it belonged to. "You need the kit?"

Kakashi surveyed his knuckles blandly, flattening his hands against the tile wall. They were bruised and bluish-red with uniform abrasions scattered over their peaks. He folded them and spread them again, then half-formed a few basic seals.

_Nothing's broken, _he confirmed, sweeping the collected blood from between his fingers.

As he leaned back against the opposite wall, the names Mizuki had listed flashed through his mind. None of them were Konoha shinobi, which was a cold but sturdy comfort; if there had to be rot in the city, he preferred that it be just one traitor, rather than many.

_He's not gonna take this well._

Kakashi sighed, loosening muscles in his chest that had felt torturously tight for hours. He dragged his fingers through his hair, cleaning the blood and dirt out with cursory motions and a dash of shampoo.

_I told him I'd stop digging._

Iruka had been emphatic: one more chance. Even if he hadn't been as disturbed by the prying as he was, Kakashi reasoned, he would still likely respond poorly to finding out that his closest friend had orchestrated the attack.

The thought infused itself into his ravenous hunger and dehydration, and a wave of nausea passed over him. He scrubbed the last traces of his mission from his skin and stepped out of the shower hardly refreshed.

By luck a last ration bar remained in his pack, making it the only edible food item in his apartment. He wolfed it down and gulped a few glasses of water before returning to his bedroom to climb into bed.

Outside his window, rosy light glittered in the icicles hanging from the eaves of his building. Night receded along the horizon, leaving the pale gold wash of early morning in its wake. Kakashi estimated that he had not slept in thirty-six hours or more, and in the same thought realized that he could not sleep until he saw Iruka again.

"Pakkun," he called as he wrapped his leg bindings, "you around?"

The pug appeared on cue, dour and alert as ever.

"You good to go on food for a little while?"

"Think so, boss. Another mission?"

Kakashi shook his head and stooped to ruffle the dog's scruff as he passed by.

"Just checking."

* * *

Scaling the tree outside Iruka's window was drudgery of the highest order; Kakashi slipped on patches of ice clining to the bark more than was respectable for a shinobi of his seniority, but he was determined to reach the branch that reached toward the window.

Given the early hour, he had expected Iruka to be asleep, and had thus come prepared to take the utmost care in picking the window's lock. But when he peered inside through the narrow patch of glass left untouched by fog or frost, he found Iruka awake, reclining against his headboard with a stack of papers in his lap.

For a moment, he thought of leaving him that way, in peace. He thought of returning home and slowly cutting off contact with him, of showing up later and later for their arranged meetings, of forgetting plans, of breaking promises. It seemed the safest course of action for Iruka, though the thought of it caused a painful tightness in his chest.

Kakashi tapped lightly on the windowpane, startling the pen from Iruka's lips.

"Morning," the chuunin greeted, forcing the window open against the weight of a few days' ice accumulation.

"Morning," Kakashi muttered. He entered unceremoniously, losing a sandal and displacing his hitai-ate in the process. Iruka returned to bed to organize his to-be-graded stack before setting it on the nightstand for future work. He sat on the edge of the bed and turned to Kakashi, who quickly dislodged his remaining sandal and approached, coming to stand before the chuunin.

"I'm glad you're back," Iruka smiled up at him, though his eyes seemed a touch fatigued, "want to pick up where we left off?" He knew better than to bring up the mission, or to ask how things had gone in general; from the state of Kakashi's balance, he surmised that the mission had been an arduous one. Iruka brought his hands up to Kakashi's hips, massaging the ridges of bone through his pants before gravitating toward the jounin's fly.

"Iruka," Kakashi circled the other's wrists gently, stilling him, "I'm sorry."

"About what?" Iruka raised an eyebrow, growing quickly suspicious.

Kakashi hesitated. "About – well, your teacup. And, ah – all this." He had no plan for broaching the subject, and already he realized his delivery had no chance of grace.

Iruka dropped his gaze to the floor, peering at the patch of carpet between their feet.

"Look, Kakashi," he swallowed and glanced back up, "I can understand why you'd want to know. But this is all – it's all in the past for me. And I want to leave it that way. I'd rather –" his expression softened, and he cleared his throat quietly before finishing, "I just want to have this, now."

Kakashi laced his fingers with Iruka's and leaned over him, bracing himself with a knee between the chuunin's thighs. Iruka lay back, his pulse racing as the hem of his shirt was raised over his tightened nipples.

As he lowered his lips to Iruka's neck he thought of what Genma had said in the strange, post-midnight blackness outside of Mizuki's building.

_It doesn't hurt anymore, and it doesn't hold him back. When you're a shinobi, I think that counts as healed._

Kakashi captured the palm of his right glove in his teeth and tugged it off, followed by the left. With his hands bare, he reached beneath Iruka's head to work his elastic carefully out, then threaded his fingers into the thick, clean-scented mass of dark hair.

Iruka slid his hands beneath Kakashi's shirt, bringing the fine mesh of his armor up with it as he caressed and grasped at planes of hard muscle, and the jounin found he could think of no good reason to re-open healed injuries. To do so, he knew, would be to render Iruka abjectly alone, with neither lover nor friend to trust.

He caught a dusky nipple between his lips and sucked enthusiastically, rolling the other between his thumb and forefinger. Iruka moaned, arching up; when his hips rocked against Kakashi's, the jounin snaked his hand between them to palm his clothed arousal.

"Mmm – Kakashi," Iruka panted, lifting his hips to kick off his pants.

"I missed this," Kakashi confessed, his voice husky and low. Iruka grinned and dipped his fingers beneath the waistband of the jounin's pants, encircling the base of his cock.

"This_?_" he asked, squeezing tight.

"_This_," Kakashi clarified, tangling his fingers again in Iruka's hair as he brought their lips together, seeking the other's tongue with his own. _This _was the only name he could give what had grown between them, and though his mind was clouded with exhaustion and the burden of what he had learned, he knew beyond doubt that _this_ had become _more than this_.

Iruka seemed to intuit the same. He slid the jounin's pants over his hips, running his fingertips down the length of his thighs. A soft groan caught in Kakashi's throat as he shifted out of them. Then Iruka's fingers were brushing teasingly against his scalp, and clear fluid was dripping onto the chuunin's stomach, and it was all he could manage to rifle hastily through the nightstand drawer for lube.

His weariness worked against his libido and kept him gentle though his cock pulsed as his finger pushed deep into Iruka's body. He worked it in and out, adding another when Iruka's thighs parted in invitation.

"Ready?" he withdrew only when Iruka's eyes closed in easy pleasure.

He nodded, and Kakashi positioned himself above, balancing on a forearm on either side of Iruka's shoulders. The chuunin draped his calves over the small of Kakashi's back, drawing him close.

Previously Kakashi hadn't taken the time to watch Iruka during sex; he had only focused on his scars, his marks, suggestions of the past. Presently he observed his expression instead, noting the way his tongue darted out to sweep over his lower lip as the tip of Kakashi's cock breached his tight entrance. His brows knit together and a flush formed from his neck to the lightly colored, wispy hairs at his hairline.

"Iruka," Kakashi breathed.

Dark eyes fluttered open. Iruka brought a hand up to cup Kakashi's cheek, his thumb resting on the pale vertical scar on the crest of his cheekbone, then sliding down to slip between his lips. Kakashi accepted it readily, his tongue tracing along the calloused pad as he began to thrust.

It began slow and deep, every stroke drawn in to its completion by Iruka's insistent thighs. He moaned, head tipped back, and arched against Kakashi, who increased his pace in response. Sweat broke out over the flexing muscles of his back, shining on old scars and new bruises.

Emotion inflected his pleasure. This alone in the range of sexual experience was new, was different, was distinct from what had come before. It felt disorienting and distracted him somewhat from the heretofore rote motions of sex, and he found his rhythm growing frantic, desperate.

Iruka gasped, his thighs tightening on Kakashi's waist as he arched up against him, the plane of the jounin's stomach brushing slick and erratic against the head of his cock. He came moaning the other's name, clutching at his shoulders, grasping handfuls of muscle and flesh and the vivid black ANBU tattoo.

Kakashi followed closely, his upper arms trembling as he spilled his seed inside Iruka, riding out his orgasm in a few final, deep thrusts. Warmth spread inside the chuunin slightly stinging, and he draped his arm over the other's back, heart still pounding.

Iruka bit his lip as Kakashi withdrew, then turned to face the jounin as he lay down on his side, exhausted.

"We're going to have to split the rent if you keep sleeping here," he teased.

"I'll give you my registration number," Kakashi yawned, "you can pick up my checks, save me some time."

"I'm not running your errands yet," Iruka grinned.

"Hold that thought," Kakashi murmured, burrowing down into the top sheet. For a moment Iruka thought he meant to get out of bed and return, but he never shifted from his spot, save to clasp Iruka's wrist when he moved to stand.

"Stay," he said.

* * *

**Epilogue is coming up soon! Hope you enjoyed - please let me know what you think!**


	9. Epilogue

**All done! I really hope you enjoyed it. Thanks so much for reading, and many thanks to my reviewers. You guys have helped immensely. I'd love to know your thoughts** **on this final piece!**

* * *

Iruka had wanted to visit Mizuki in the hospital the next morning, and he very nearly had; it was only through instigating another round of sex that Kakashi had been able to dissuade him. Mizuki had claimed that his injuries had been earned in a fight with several foreign shinobi passing by while he was on perimeter patrol.

Kakashi still suspects that the medical nin examining him at the hospital must have known otherwise, though nothing to that effect was ever spoken aloud. Years have passed, and Genma still has yet to mention that night or any of the events surrounding it, though he and Kakashi have shared a handful of dark and knowing glances during quiet moments at the bar.

The rest of that season blends into a broader narrative of the past in Kakashi's mind, though that particular sequence of events remains clear and weighty among all other memories, in part because he knows he can never exorcise it. Mizuki is now incarcerated, though for crimes not obviously related to the rape; the names he gave during his interrogation now comprise Kakashi's own personal bingo book, and it dwindles by the year.

Having emptied it of tea, Kakashi upturns his earthenware cup on the blank surface of his small table, and stands. When the joints of his shoulders pop and protest upon shifting, he realizes he has been waiting longer than he anticipated.

_School's out._

Kakashi checks his weapons instinctively before stepping through his door, running his hand briefly over his thigh holster and chest pockets to ensure the weight of a kunai and senbon respectively. Only when he feels the firm outlines of the weapons through his clothes like hard bones beneath flesh can he close his door behind him, and breathe the winter air.

Snow drifts earthward in thick, soft flakes, gathering on rooftops and the bare branches of trees. It is still early in winter, and the ground is not yet cold enough to allow much accumulation; thus, business in the village is carried on without interruption. Kakashi passes by stalls selling warm, sweet-scented taiyaki, and is very nearly lured in by the aroma. Lovers huddle under shared umbrellas on the thoroughfare, and children scatter down the side streets in each other's footsteps, chattering and laughing on their way home.

All around him, the snow consumes sound. Voices seem softer, echoes fainter, footsteps gentler. His breath flows through his mask as steam.

At the double doors of the academy, he wades through a crowd of children awaiting their parents. Behind them, Iruka leans against the far wall of the corridor, talking with a heavyset colleague whose name Kakashi still has not learned.

"Oi, Iruka-sensei," he greets, hands still lodged in his pockets. Some of the older students whisper to their younger peers as he passes, producing wide-eyed stares and gasps. Kakashi smiles genially and waves.

"Kakashi-san," Iruka answers, pushing himself off from the wall, "you must be here about the guest lecture."

"Better to be prepared," Kakashi agreed, "where's the room?"

"Right this way."

Kakashi follows as though he does not know the route to Iruka's classroom by heart.

He hasn't yet cleaned up for the day. Quizzes still lay on desks, and pencils remain crossed over them, some having rolled from the benches onto the floor. Iruka crosses to the windows and gazes out at the snow for a moment before lowering the shades.

"You can get the door," he calls over his shoulder, striding between the rows of desks to gather up the papers.

Kakashi shuts the door softly. With the shades drawn and the sky so darkly overcast, the classroom is nearly dark. The jounin switches on one set of florescent lights as Iruka stacks the collected papers on his desk.

"Why the ruse?" Kakashi asks absently.

"Ah, more for the kids than Asato-sensei," Iruka admits with a clever grin, "if they think you're coming in to guest lecture, they'll straighten up."

"Ah."

It is not common knowledge that the two of them share something transcendent and fundamental. They maintain their own apartments and professions. Iruka has _not _given up work for an apron and set of house shoes in the tradition of lower-ranked kunoichi, though Kakashi wryly suggests it after particularly harrowing lessons. Kakashi still takes missions, and Iruka still elects not to. They make love with startling regularity given their mismatched schedules, and though Iruka long ago accepted the fact that Kakashi relieves himself sexually with others on missions, he hasn't for years.

Not that he would admit it. Kakashi leans against Iruka's desk as the chuunin gathers up the pencils from the desks, depositing them into a plastic as he counts.

"Somebody always steals one," he mutters, descending the stairs in the center aisle. He slides open the lowest drawer of his desk and settles the box in its place.

Kakashi leans over the desk and kisses him without warning, snaking a hand behind his neck to steady him. For long moments, Iruka is taken by the familiar sensation of the jounin's tongue sliding against his own, urging his lips to part wider, to come closer, to give more.

"No," Iruka grins into the kiss, "I said – mm – no."

Kakashi sucks his lower lip between his teeth and nibbles lightly.

"Mm? What?" As always, he pleads ignorance.

"I'm not screwing you – on my desk."

Kakashi breaks the kiss panting, having threaded his fingers into Iruka's hair.

"Nobody's around," he counters, tracing teasing patterns against the other's scalp. Iruka shudders at the feeling, but shakes his head slowly, still smiling.

"Not now," he runs the tip of his tongue over the jounin's lower lip before pulling away, "not ever."

It's always worth a try. Kakashi watches as the chuunin tucks his portfolio neatly into a satchel, and slings it over his shoulder, and then checks each drawer once before rounding the desk and heading for the door, keys in hand.

Kakashi follows, flicking the lights off as he exits.

Iruka hesitates for a moment when he reaches the door, checking his satchel for a scarf he forgot to pack. He steps into the early evening with Kakashi close behind, and breathes the faint scent of pine in the clean air.

They walk home in comfortable silence. Iruka, too, is struck by this time of year, though he generally attempts to put it out of his mind. Memories of that unhappy time are the last trace of bitterness in his life, and when he comes upon that knowledge, he cannot determine how it came to be that way. It is only in retrospect that he begins to realize that Kakashi entered his life in punctuated transfusions, appearing and disappearing and reappearing until he was a regular fixture, and a place was made for him that felt empty in his absence. And, though Kakashi never said _please wait for me while I learn how to be with you, _he meant it all the same, and the teacher in Iruka doomed his resistance.

Kakashi is quicker on the draw, and opens Iruka's door before the chuunin can find his keys.

"One day," Kakashi is saying as he kicks off his shoes, "I hope you'll reconsider. There's a lot to be said for screwing on desks."

"Why not _your _desk?" Iruka suggests, slipping his flak jacket off his shoulders.

Kakashi shrugs.

"We'd have to try both to compare."

Iruka cannot discern to what degree Kakashi is genuinely invested in half the exploits he advances, and to what degree he simply feels obligated to convey his continued interest. He starts a kettle of tea, and peruses his cupboards for something to cook.

Kakashi watches him, leaning in the doorway of the kitchen with a novel in hand.

He has plans to reveal to Iruka what he learned all those years ago, during the surreal weeks following the Uchiha massacre. He will tell him, he thinks, about the archives, and how they were dreadfully silent and desperately cold; he will tell him about the hospital, and the day he spent shoveling snow; he will tell him about what Mizuki said as his life was dangled before him on a thread held taut by Genma, and how some of his accomplices have since met bitter ends.

Some of the words are known to him, and others have yet to form. It will take time. Kakashi rehearses in quiet moments, and sometimes in his dreams.

"What sounds good?" Iruka is leaning into the refrigerator, tapping his scar pensively.

"Anything hot," Kakashi offers, "they're selling taiyaki out there. Smelled pretty good."

"You want to go back out?"

Kakashi glances toward the ceiling as he thinks it over.

"Later," he says.

"And for now?" Iruka is grinning again, his eyes clear and alert.

Kakashi tucks the novel into his hip pouch and approaches, settling his hands on Iruka's waist. His body is as solid and sturdy as ever, undiminished by time, strengthened by experience. He slips Kakashi's mask down below his chin, and as they kiss, Kakashi contemplates keeping the reality of what he knows from him forever.

"Iruka," he breathes, reaching behind the chuunin to untie his hitai-ate and tug his hair elastic out. The scent of his hair is as strangely intoxicating as the narrow widow's peak that forms his hairline, though neither is arousing in the abstract. Again and again Kakashi is taken by how much greater Iruka is than the sum of his parts.

"Mm?" Iruka is tugging lightly at the mesh armor underneath the uniform shirt, warmed by the heat of the other's body.

"Is it okay that we don't really, ah," Kakashi ducks to allow his shirt to be slipped over his head, "say _it_?"

Kakashi's dog tags jingle against his chest. Iruka tangles his fingers in the chain, and fastens their lips again.

"No need to tell me," he murmurs, "what I already know."

* * *

**Thanks for the reads! Please review. And happy new year!**


	10. Cut Scenes: Ch 6

**Hi all! Though this story is completed, I thought some of you might like a look at some scenes I had to take out. As you can probably tell from the way the chapters are arranged, I write by throwing together a bunch of connected scenes, then picking out the ones I want to keep. Some are removed because they're too long, sort of crappy, or focus too heavily on one particular moment, which messes up the pace of the story. As I come across the ones I chose not to include in my drafts, I'll post them, since some of you were very, very kind in praise of the writing style, and I thought you might enjoy browsing them.**

**Disclaimer: Don't own.  
**

**Warnings: non-con.  
**

* * *

Asato arrived half an hour late accompanied by a burst of cold wind.

"It's really terrible out there," he complained, offering up an apologetic smile, "sorry I'm late."

Iruka had been prepared to leave for the last thirty minutes, and did not intend to be delayed any further.

"It's no trouble," he replied graciously, rounding the mission control desk, "everything is filed and ready to go. Stay warm, Asato-sensei."

"You too," Asato called to the closing door.

Iruka fought against the driving wind with his collar turned up, arriving at the bar chafed and disheveled by the cold.

Hayate remained, sequestered among a mountain of empty bottles and glasses, Yugao leaning close to whisper in his ear. The gesture gave Iruka a moment's pause, but he advanced anyhow, emboldened when he spotted Mizuki seated nearby.

Mizuki met Iruka's eyes as he approached, and from his expression of genial concern Iruka supposed he had seen Yugao murmur into Hayate's ear. He mustered a smile anyhow.

"Happy birthday, Hayate-san," he greeted.

"Oi, Iruka! Long time, no see. Have a drink, eh? Sit down, stay a while…"

Hayate was clearly drunk. Mizuki rose and rounded the table, clapping a hand on Iruka's shoulder.

"Let's get a drink," he suggested, to Hayate's enthusiastic approval. Yugao returned to her whispering as the two chuunin headed to the bar.

"Sorry about that," Mizuki sighed, now out of Hayate's earshot.

Iruka shrugged numbly.

"Is it what I think?"

The bartender arrived and took their orders, then disappeared for a moment to fulfill them.

"You know how women are," Mizuki replied, "it's always gossip. It'll die down soon enough."

Iruka paid for his beer and gulped half of it before Mizuki stopped him with a gentle nudge to his shoulder.

"How are you doing, anyway?" he asked, "You've been scarce."

Iruka scanned the bar for the cause of his scarcity, but found no Kakashi. He drowned his disappointment in another swig of beer, and glanced noncommittally at Mizuki.

"I'm getting better," he said. After a moment he added: "I've just been busy."

"Ah."

"Speaking of…" Iruka had nearly finished his beer, and could stomach the idea of returning to Hayate and Yugao even less than he could before drinking. His gaze flickered toward the door.

"Not so soon," Mizuki said pleadingly.

"I just…have a lot to get done."

Mizuki seemed to sense that Iruka did not intend to stay, and nodded toward Hayate and Yugao.

"I'll handle them," he offered.

"Thanks, Mizuki." Iruka left his empty bottle on the bar with a tip, and waved over his shoulder to a perplexed Hayate before setting off into the bitter cold.

* * *

_First there was a moment of shock, and then an explosion of throbbing pain, and then blood streamed into his eyes. Someone jerked his hitai-ate down over them, obscuring his vision totally. Then they covered his mouth._

_They transferred him somewhere, from the tent he had been preparing for himself and his teammate, dragging him through soft terrain. He thrashed wildly, and fought with what remained of his faculties; when they began stripping his clothes away, he thought he was being disarmed._

_Someone spit on him. Iruka twisted his body and was punished with a fierce blow to his stomach that he could not curl against. Hands grasped his wrists and ankles and spread them outward, over-extending his joints. _

_A blade pressed into the flesh of his throat as the hand was drawn away from his mouth. He swallowed against the dryness in his mouth and struggled to even his breathing, but then there were fingers at the corners of his lips, prying his jaw open._

"_If you fucking bite, I'll cut your fucking head off," someone warned remotely, and then his mouth was filled with flesh._

Iruka woke with a start and immediately covered his mouth, desperately hoping that he had not made any sound. The room was unfamiliar to him, but after a moment, memories of the previous night began to filter through his panic.

_It's Kakashi's place, _he told himself, _just a nightmare._

Sweat cooled on his skin. He lay still for a moment to let his heart slow and his breathing return to a steady pace. He felt lightheaded, disoriented, and then, finally, ashamed.

There was no stirring beside him, and it gave him some comfort that he had not awoken Kakashi. When he was sure that he would be steady on his feet, Iruka carefully peeled the bedspread away from his body, and slid from the bed.

Earlier, he had glimpsed the door to the jounin's bathroom from the corner of his eye. Now he struggled to grope his way to it in the dark, deploying all his training as a shinobi to remain silent.

From his place in bed, Kakashi watched him go.

* * *

_Nice._

Iruka nudged the remnants of sleep from his eyes with his knuckles as he glanced around Kakashi's cramped bathroom. It reeked of copper and ammonia laced with stringent notes of cleanser, and though the surfaces were stained, they appeared to be sterile.

He eased the lid of the toilet closed with his foot anyway. A flash of garish pink and orange caught his eye; upon closer inspection, he discovered a series of half-rolled magazines stuffed in the space between the toilet base and wall. A brief rake of his thumb revealed as many pert breasts as stiff cocks, which did not surprise him.

In only his uniform pants, he folded to sit on the toilet, elbows on his knees, forehead in his palms. It felt unconscionably rude trying to find privacy in someone else's home, especially following such a singularly intimate round of sex.

_Intimate? _The word seemed as absurd in association with Hatake Kakashi as the entire arrangement, but there it was: Iruka could hardly begin to make sense of it. The pieces of his life did not seem to fit together. He had been happy, and then alone, and then in the most tremendous pain, and after a period of numbness during which he struggled even to do up his leg bindings in the mornings, Kakashi had appeared, apropos of nothing, and made love to him.

_No, _Iruka corrected himself, _fucked me. _ During their first few encounters, Kakashi had seemed somewhat annoyed to do so much as finger him; yet only hours ago, the jounin had paused mid-thrust to kiss him, long and deep, as though he couldn't finish without it.

It made the guilt worse, not better.

And Iruka was accustomed to that sort of unexpected blow, to the tortured logic of recovery. He knew, and could have explained if asked, that having a nightmare that night was no different than having one any other night, and that Kakashi's tenderness did not cause him to recall what he never really forgot. He could have informed any curious party with perfect clarity that one nightmare after a session of fond, intimate sex did not mean he had become incapable of sharing something healthy with someone.

Still he felt the burden of his guilt press down on his shoulders like a tangible weight. He tilted his head up to scan the tile wall for any remark on the man sleeping outside, some suggestion of affect or personality, but it was blank. Outside the small sliding window high on the opposite wall, freezing rain continued to fall.

There was motion outside the door. Iruka focused instinctively on the thin line of space between the floor and the door, and discerned the sound of footsteps.

He leapt up at once, scrambling to flush the toilet and run the sink, hoping desperately that his fumbling wasn't evident. Turning, he released the lock and flung the door open, revealing Kakashi, impassive as ever.

Before Iruka could interject an apology for waking him, Kakashi spoke.

"Did you hear something?"

"Pardon? Ah, I'm, ah, sorry for waking you –" Iruka stepped out of the bathroom to allow the other inside, but he remained still.

"It's okay," he went on, as though Iruka hadn't spoken a word, "I heard it too."

"W-well," the chuunin stammered, uncertain, but again Kakashi cut in.

"Makes sense to be jumpy, sleeping over here. This line of work, you make your fair share of enemies."

Iruka dropped his gaze to his feet, mutely shaking his head.

"But I've got the place pretty well outfitted," Kakashi concluded, glancing toward the door and window in turn, "so don't sweat it too much."

He settled his hand on the small of the other's back, and Iruka moved without thought, following him back to bed. Kakashi paused for a moment before the window, the rain on the windowpane forming mottled shadows on his white body. He followed the chuunin after a moment, drawing up close behind him.

"It's no reason to let your guard down," he added teasingly as he draped his arm over Iruka's waist.

"Of course not," Iruka agreed, though he knew it wouldn't matter if he did. And it was not, he knew, by nature of the various traps set at the door and windows that he came by such security, but rather by nature of the man currently drifting into sleep beside him, who for all of his cool nonchalance, was one of the more dangerous men in Konohagakure, and possibly the world.

Iruka exhaled a long breath, and slept dreamlessly.

* * *

**Thanks for the reads; please review!**


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